


By the Arrogance of Dipper Pines

by defyaugury



Series: Pure Intent [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Action/Adventure, After Weirdmageddon, Alternate Series Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Fluff, Human Bill Cipher, M/M, Older Pines Twins, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:21:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 56,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5280065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defyaugury/pseuds/defyaugury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dipper clutched his backpack to his chest, crouched in an abandoned back alleyway and breathing heavily as sounds of carnage and screams of terror reached them from down the street. He could feel Mabel's gaze boring into him like fire.</p><p>"Dipper Delphius Pines," she hissed at him. "Please do not tell me we are talking about the same thing right now."</p><p>Dipper winced, clutching the bag a bit harder as it sounded like an entire store front was smashed through. "Ah, well—"</p><p>Mabel's eyes grew wide. "Dipper Pines. You're talking about setting free the demon we've had locked in our basement for the last ten years? The same demon that started Weirdmageddon and nearly killed us both? That demon?"</p><p>The horrendous scream of a monster reached them, along with sounds of glass crunching and metal screeching. A gas tank exploded and there was a deafening roar of fire. Dipper glanced at his sister and cringed, "Please tell me I don't have to answer that question."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Opens Doors You've Never Found

Dipper's breathing ricocheted inside his ears like thunder. His heart raced so hard he thought it'd burst, as his chest screamed for air. His feet hit the ground, the soles of his sneakers slapping with each footfall. His backpack thumped heavily on his back, weighed down with journals, notebooks, disposable cameras, holy water, and a sawed-off shotgun with what was left of the barrel sticking out the top of the bag. He'd lost his hat somewhere along the way, his hair blown back by the same wind that tore at his clothes and stung his eyes.

Dipper Pines ran. He ran faster than he'd ever run before. Why? Because if he didn't he was going to die. The only trouble was, he was running over rooftops.

Now, you might think running over rooftops in a city might not be that difficult of a task. The roofs are relatively flat and concrete—perfect running ground—and the leaps between buildings aren't that big so long as you have a running start. So, in theory, it should work just fine. That is to say, so long as that theory doesn't involve a massive, twenty foot tall man-eating, wart-covered, green as sick monster of an ogre chasing you  _across_ said rooftops, wielding an equally massive club as it rampages through the streets.

Dipper leapt, barely clearing the edge of the next building, his sneakers stumbling on the gravel coated flat-top before he regained his footing. He could hear the massive thump-thump-thump of the ogre behind him, crunching cars and shattering asphalt beneath its leathered feet. Dipper leapt to the next building, this time landing a little more gracefully. He hadn't taken more than two steps, however, when he heard a whistling, like something massive sailing through the air. He dove for the ground, his forearms ripping open over gravel and his chin striking the concrete rooftop hard enough to make his teeth rattle. He hit the ground just in time, the massive ogre club sailing right over his head with surprising speed and careening instead into the billboard on top of the building across the street. The ogre roared as its club lodged itself in the eye of the billboard's grinning model and Dipper had to cover his ears. Windows shattered as the ogre screamed, trying to dislodge its club.

Dipper scrambled to his feet again, his chin throbbing with pain as blood ran down his forearms. He leapt to the next roof and scrambled at his belt to retrieve an old and battered walkie-talkie.

 _~chzz~_  "Mabel!" Dipper yelped. "Where are you??"

A terrible shrieking noise reached him and Dipper turned over his shoulder to find the ogre had given up trying to pull his club from the billboard and had instead decided to rip the entire board from the rooftop, its metal support beams ripping up from the roof with the most horrendous sound. The ogre roared again and Dipper cringed, his ears feeling like they'd split open.

 _~chzz~_  "Mabel!" he tried again. "Some backup would be really really nice right about now!"

The ground shuddered, nearly knocking Dipper off his feet. He glanced behind him. The ogre had successfully managed to rip up the billboard and was now running down the street, faster than before with each of its footfalls shaking the ground like an earthquake. It wielded its club in its hand, the billboard still jammed on its end like a lopsided mace. A roar shook the air and Dipper screamed, turning back around to continue running.

He came to the edge of the roof and leapt. He would've made it to the next rooftop had it not been for the fact that the ground was shaking like jello on top of a blender. He lost his balance, and hit the edge of the other roof, his stomach sinking into the concrete wall that bordered the ledge. Dipper breath left him all at once, pain blossoming in his stomach, making him feel like he was about to vomit everywhere. He heaved a grunt of pain, his arms latched over the side of the wall, he kicked his feet, his shoes scrambling on the side of the roof and tipping him the rest of the way over the ledge. He landed with an "oof!" on his back, feeling like he'd just been hit with a rocket in his abdomen. Everything ached and he was trying very very hard to get air back into his lungs.

He'd dropped his walkie-talkie when he'd hit the wall, leaving it to topple into the alleyway below, along with his only way to contact Mabel since the cell tower had already been destroyed.  _Where was she anyways?_  She'd never gone this long without answering him on a job before. He wondered if anything had happened to her then immediately pushed the idea out of his head for two reasons: One,  _he_  was the one the ogre had been chasing for the last forty minutes. Two, the idea of loosing Mabel was so utterly absurd, it wasn't even worth thinking about.

It wasn't exactly like Dipper had much time to think about these things anyways, because in the next moment, he heard a very familiar whistling sound. Dipper groaned and rolled to his right, the ogre's club narrowly missing him as it landed exactly where he'd been laying a few moments ago. The roof shattered and when the club lifted up, it left behind a massive hole. Dipper could see straight through it and into the floor bellow. The club lifted high and Dipper could see the grotesque face of the monster wielding it, with its puny bloodshot eyes and overgrown bottom fangs that prevented it from closing its mouth properly and the sores that covered its bulbous nose. The creature roared and the club began to fall.

Dipper scrambled backwards across the roof, his limbs sore and aching from having run so hard. His legs felt dead, he was so exhausted, and his sides were throbbing terribly. He was pretty sure he'd bruised a few ribs and probably broken at least one when he'd hit the roof.

The club landed just in front of his feet, shaking the building, and Dipper scrambled backwards even faster, his heart racing in his throat.  _Where the hell was Mabel?_  His back hit the edge of the roof, and Dipper all but froze. His chest heaved, his heart racing so hard it hurt. He looked up at the ogre as it brought its club up over its head one more time, the billboard hanging from it crumpled and torn in half. The grit of the rooftop wall pressed into his back. He had nowhere to go, nowhere to run, his adrenaline drained from him.

 _So this is the way the world ends_ , Dipper thought miserably.  _Not with a demon frat party, but with a bang._

" _ **Hey, ugly!**_ "

The ogre paused, with Dipper staring up at it, wide-eyed and breathing heavily. It's club stalled in the air and it turned to look over its shoulder at where the shout had come from. Dipper followed its gaze, looking behind the monster to find the water tower just across the street. Atop it, in all her sweater and glitter-clad glory, auburn hair floating in the wind like streams of copper with a crossbow over one shoulder, a grappling hook at her belt, and a sling-shot stretched tight in her hands and aimed directly at the towering ogre, looking like the most beautiful warrior goddess to ever grace a water tower, was Mabel Pines to the rescue.

 _I'm going to kill her_ , Dipper thought.

She let out a warbling war cry and let loose her sling-shot, a steel barring sinking right into the eye of the monster. The ogre let out a terrible scream, dropping its club to claw at its face.

Mabel dropped her sling-shot and pulled a small remote from her pocket and held it above her head.

"Get ready bro-bro!" she shouted.

Dipper stared at her. She couldn't be serious.

"I am the god of destruction!" she screamed.

Apparently she was entirely serious.

Dipper scrambled backwards, following along the wall of the roof, trying to get as far away from the water tower as possible.

There came another war cry and then two, devastating explosions ripped through the air, followed by the shrieking creak of tearing metal and wood. Dipper looked up to see as the water tower tipped forward, heading straight for the ogre, Mabel ridding atop it like a soldier into battle. Dipper could see what was going to happen before it happened and he stood up, preparing to brace himself against the wall of the roof. The water tower careened straight towards the ogre, landing directly on top of it like a ballet. The water reservoir exploded over the head of the ogre, and the two went down in a mess of screaming roars and rushing water.

Mabel was thrown from the tower on impact and sent flying through the air like a glittering, rainbow-feathered bird of prey. She screamed, her eyes blown wide with surprise—apparently this was  _not_  a part of her plan—and headed right for Dipper. Dipper barely had time to scream before she hit him like a pile of bricks and sent them both tumbling backwards over the wall of the roof. They tumbled down the back of the building, the two of the screaming before landing with a thud in a heap of trash bags that were just squishy and just smelly enough to break their fall.

For a few moments, nothing happened. No screaming or roaring came from the street, so Dipper assumed the ogre to be incapacitated for the moment, if not dead. The alley was silent, save for a few rats running for cover and the drip-drip-drip from one of the broken bags.

"Ow."

Mabel groaned and rolled over, "Blazing ball sacks, that  _hurt_!"

Dipper wasn't entirely sure he could move without rupturing something.

"Mabel," Dipper wheezed through his now three broken ribs and bruised lung. "This is getting out of"—wheeze—"hand. This was the second"—wheeze—"attack this month."

"I know," she groaned and rolled off the pile of garbage bags. "Vampires, hellhounds, witches, all that stuff we could handle, but none of them were anything like this. I hate to say this, bro-bro, but we might be getting out of our depths here."

"We can't go on like this," Dipper said, staring up at the sky, still unable to move as sounds of ambulances and fire trucks and police cars rounded the corner. "The city will be in shambles—" Dipper took another wheezing breath, pain shooting up his side. "We still have one option," he said, glancing at her.

Mabel's face fell into a scowl, brown eyes glinting at him through the dark of the alley. She staggered towards him, shaking her head, rat's nest hair swaying in her face.

"No," she muttered. "We've talked about this, Dipper, and there is no flying pigfarts name in hell are we doing that."

"He might have answers—"

"I don't care," Mabel said with a tone that said this conversation was done, that it had been done, and will stay done. "He can't help us any more than we can help us, and _that_ ," she said with a raise of her eyebrows, "is a Mabel fact."

"Mabel, he might be the only one that would know—"

"Dipper," she sighed, leaning against the alley wall. "We are not talking about this right now."

"Mabel, if you'd just listen to me—"

" _No_ ," she snapped. "Because I know what you're going to say, Dipper. I've heard it before and I don't care how you want to justify it, we are not setting free the demon dorito we've had locked in our basement for the last ten years. Come on, let's just go home."

Dipper glanced up to find her standing over him, the pink in her hair turned nearly brown from dirt and debris, her clothes torn, and a spectacular bruise already starting to form along her jaw. She looked as exhausted as he was. He sighed, the fight suddenly draining out of him. He decided the drop the topic as he reached up for Mabel's offered hand and let her pull him to his feet. He sagged against her and let her guide them out of the alley.

* * *

The sun sank towards the horizon, casting long shadows and painting the sky burnt orange and blood red, the colors running together like a soiled painting. A slumped, slightly dilapidated shack stood on the outskirts of the woods, flanked by a tree-line that clawed towards the sky with grasping branches and fluttering needles and leaves. The dark marks on the roof showed signs that the shack had once had letters spelling out The Mystery Shack pinned there but had since been taken down. Instead, a small and modest sign hung on the front door:

 

**The Mystery Twins**

**Gravity Falls's experts for all your** **supernatural occurrences**

**and all around weirdness.**

**Drop-ins welcome**

**Emergency number: (541) XXX-XXXX**

 

Dipper sat curled up at the fold up table in the living room. Newspapers from the last few months created a black and white collage over the table, monochrome pictures staring up at the ceiling under headlines like:  _Clouds Falling Over the Falls_ ,  _Hellhounds Spotted on Harrison Street_ , and _Vampire Cult Discovered Under Town Hall_.

He sighed and leaned forward on the table, head resting in his hand. His ribs screamed at him, protesting any movement that wasn't necessary, and his scrapped arms and chin throbbed in time with his heart-beat. They'd allowed the EMTs to patch them up and check for any serious injuries, refusing any insisted trips back to the hospital. The twins knew the local hospital would already have their hands full with civilians as it were and they didn't need to impose any more of a burden.

Dipper glanced at Mabel, who was sleeping on the couch in the living room, the large blue one they'd bought after Stan left them the Shack to "look after" nearly five years ago. She was passed out, pressed up against the back of the couch, spooning a fat pot bellied pig with grey whiskers on his chiny-chin-chin as he snoozed peacefully with her arm flung over his wide paunch. A musty green iguana slumbered above them, it's length taking up the back of the couch, like a sleepy dragon keeping watch over her young.

Posters and weapons and maps and diagrams and art supplies littered the shack, looking somewhere between Van Helsing, a teenage girl, and an accountant all sharing a a living space together. Empty energy drinks and coffee mugs sat scattered about, evidence of long nights and early mornings. A small, angry-faced and hairy fairy rattled in its cage in the corner atop a stack of books, looking like a flying tarantula, furious at having been caught.

Dipper threw a sock at it, but that only seemed to anger the little creature further.

Dipper sighed and looked back to the news articles. He had more pinned to the walls in his room, a map of weird occurrences and anomalies. A graph was on his desk, showing an exponential increase in the number of anomalies he'd counted over the past few years. It seemed a new monster was attacking the city almost every month, and that wasn't even counting all the strange new things the twins were finding in the woods. Things were still leaking in from other dimensions, that much was obvious, only now they seemed to be coming in packs and droves, flooding Gravity Falls with more weirdness than the little town was used to. He picked up a paper and looked at the front page without seeing it. Something was going on here. Something big. They just didn't know what it was.

Dipper looked out the living room door and thought back to a call they'd gotten from the mayer about a dragon that had apparently taken hostage of the local Shop-n-Mart.

_Dipper clutched his backpack to his chest, crouched in an abandoned back alleyway and breathing heavily as sounds of carnage and screams of terror reached them from down the street. He could feel Mabel's gaze boring into him like fire._

_"Dipper Delphius Pines," she hissed at him. "Please do not tell me we are talking about the same thing right now."_

_Dipper winced, clutching the bag a bit harder as it sounded like an entire store front was smashed through. "Ah, well—"_

_Mabel's eyes grew wide. "Dipper Pines. You're talking about setting free the demon we've had locked in our basement for the last ten years? The same demon that started Weirdmageddon and nearly killed us both? That demon?"_

_The horrendous scream of a monster reached them, along with sounds of glass crunching and metal screeching. A gas tank exploded and there was a deafening roar of fire. Dipper glanced at his sister and cringed, "Please tell me I don't have to answer that question."_

That'd been three months ago. Things had only gotten worse since then. And if Dipper's calculations were right, it would only keep getting worse.

Dipper sighed again and looked at Mabel, who was still sleeping like the dead. Her hair was still a mess, with her bangs singed and her dyed-pink ends knotted in a rats' nest. Scrapes and tacked on neon band-aids covered her face. Her hand was mummified in bandages for a second degree burn and the bruise on her jaw had already darkened to a beautiful plum color. Dipper thought of his broken ribs and how she could have very easily been hurt as bad as him, or even worse. He thought of the moment of panic he'd had earlier at the thought of losing her. If things kept on like this, if the monsters and attacks kept coming, Dipper seriously wondered if he'd be able to protect her.

He looked out the living room door. He couldn't see it from here, but across the Shack was the old gift shop, now a room they'd turned into storage to house all the strange creatures and evidence of anomalies they'd collected over the years. Or Dipper's lab, as Mabel called it. In the corner of the room stood a door, looking almost invisible as its wood panels lined up perfectly with the wall. The vending machine that used to be attached to it had since been removed, leaving nothing but the door and the stairs behind it that lead to an underground bunker of sorts.

He looked to Mabel again, making sure she was truly and honestly sound asleep. He looked back in the direction of the room/lab, the image of that door and what was held behind it burned into his mind, just waiting to be opened. The fold up chair creaked as Dipper crawled from it. He walked over to the couch and ignored his screaming ribs to lean down and press a kiss to Mabel's forehead. She shifted in her sleep, a small smile flitting to her lips as Dipper leaned back. A bracelet glinted on her wrist, small, with tiny bright beads that sparkled, nearly swallowed by all the other brightly colored bands and friendship bracelets that laddered up her arm. His gaze lingered on the bracelet for a moment. It was a cheep little thing, something a thirteen-year-old might make in summer camp arts and crafts and give to his twin sister because she liked glow in the dark glitter beads. 

He sighed, pulling his gaze away before padding through the house, leaving Mabel to sleep soundly with her pet pig on the couch.

* * *

A man hung in the middle of a room. Well,  _room_  was probably a bit too generous a word— _dungeon_ , now that sounded a bit more accurate, with its lack of light and cold stone floor and walls. He swayed, suspended by rusted metal chains locked on both his wrists and ankles, pulling him in four different directions at once, like a fallen star. Limp, greasy hair hung in his face, falling past his chin and hiding his eyes behind a curtain of tarnished gold. His skin looked grey and ashen, like he hand't seen the sun in months, his clothes hanging torn and ragged.

Large pieces of machinery sat collected in the corner, rusting and collecting dust under a stone ceiling. If fit together, they almost looked like they could make some sort of portal, but they were most likely too far in a state of disrepair to send anyone anywhere. The rest of the dungeon was filled with machines and devices and tools in similar states of deterioration, rusting with their wires gutted and spilling out of their bellies, their broken lights staring into space like empty eye sockets. Everything down here was broken, useless, and unwanted.

The man swayed in his bonds, swinging back and forth slightly, his bare feet drifting in open air as he jerked his hands from side to side. He hummed a tune, high notes ringing out against the stone ceiling and bouncing back to him, like tiny bells on a winter night, cold and distant.

_Rub your belly, pat your head_

_Corners, edges_

_Middle part_

He giggled as he swung back and forth, his chains creaking, his bonds moaning. He opened his eye, a bright gold iris shining like a coin through the dark at the ground, sheltered by his bowed head and hanging hair. His other eye remained closed, scared over, his lid marred and sewn shut.

_Close one eye before you start_

_Nine times backwards_

_Sideways 'round_  

The door to the dungeon creaked open, a shard of broken light falling across the floor, almost reaching the man, but not quite. His voice dropped off suddenly, a grin cracking across his face to reveal a row of bright, glittering teeth. 

Footsteps reached him, the sounds of shoes coming down the stairs—one pair of shoes it seemed, oh no, not quite enough for two people it seemed—unless they were one-legged people of course, but he highly doubted that. The footfalls came down the steps one by one slowly, like they were hesitant, the wood creaking under the weight, the wind whistling down the stairway. Pipes dripped somewhere further into the basement, a rat scuttled across the floor.

The footsteps came to a stop and there was a stretch of silence. The man waited patiently, he didn't want to speak first as that would be very rude he thought. There came a  _click_  and the dungeon suddenly filled with yellow light, artificial and painfully bright. The beam of the flashlight wavered for a bit before falling out of the man's eye and to the ground, illuminating a circle of uninteresting floor.

The man with the light peered up at the man in the chains, squinting through the dark. When he spoke, his voice was deeper than the man in the chains remembered, huskier, like a tree that's come of age.

"Bill?" the man asked, his voice sounding small in the cavernous dungeon. "Are you alive?"

The man in the chains' smile grew even larger, taking up most of his face. His head snapped up, eye and teeth shinning like beacons through the darkness as he trained his sight directly on the man in front of him. His chains jingled with the sudden movement, his body and hair swaying.

The man with the flashlight staggered back, startled, his light spinning around the room. The man in the chains chuckled.

"Well, well, well," the man in the chains asked, his voice like butterknife being scraped across a rusted sheet of metal. "If it isn't my favorite meat sack," he purred, and he relished the shiver that visibly ran down the other man's spine. The man stared up at him in mild horror, no doubt thanks to his scarred eye, mangled hair, and ashen skin. Bill mused that he must look like quite the sight.

His grin grew wider, nearly splitting his face in two, "How's it hangin', Pine Tree?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone wants to hear the song Bill sings:
> 
> http://music.sjtucker.com/track/septembers-rhyme


	2. Under Lock and Key

Dipper blinked up at Bill. He was quite the...uh, sight, with his ragged hair and pale skin, like a gremlin that'd been plucked straight from the movie. His eye hadn't changed though, out of everything else, that was still the same. It glowed through the dark, watching his every move, trained on him with such intensity that Dipper practically felt naked, like everything he knew and everything he'd done and everything owned was being read by that single eye.

Dipper shook his head and swallowed. _Don't be an idiot, he can't read minds_ , he reminded himself. _At least_ , he glanced at Bill's other eye, at the massive scar slashed across his face, welding the lid shut. _He can't any more._

Bill grinned down at him, wide and intimidating as his teeth glittered in the dark.

Dipper swallowed. He could feel his fingers trembling. He knew Bill couldn't do anything, couldn't move while he was locked up like he was, but still, Dipper hated being in the same room as him. Hated that smile he had that said he wasn't afraid to _eat_ you, heart and all, at the drop of a hat. Here he was, the demon that'd been living under their feet for years, the demon that had been  _inside_  his head and had nearly ended the world, and he was finally speaking to him, face to face, for the first time in nearly a decade. Dipper took a shuddering breath and gripped his flashlight to keep his hands from shaking.

"Bill?" Dipper asked again, if only to reassure himself. 

A low chuckled reached him, Bill's grin flashing dangerously in the dark. "The one and only."

"How, uhm, how've you been?" Dipper asked and immediately cursed himself for being so inherently awkward.

Bill's grin never wavered, trained on Dipper, pinning him down like he was some specimen in a lab. "Oh, well, you know," Bill said. "I've been locked in a dungeon for the past decade, so it's been so-so," he shrugged, making his chains rattle. "The weather's been quite nice. The company, well, spectacular if I do say so myself," he chuckled to himself. "Food could be a bit better, no lobster bisque...or soda, or anything for that matter."

Dipper felt his stomach roll, not so much with fear, but guilt this time. He tried to repress it, to force it back down. Bill was not someone to feel guilty over.

"Hm," Bill hummed. "But you're not really here to talk about the weather are you, Pine Tree?"

Dipper swallowed and shifted on his feet, keeping his flashlight trained on Bill. He suddenly couldn't speak. All the questions he'd had, everything he'd wanted to ask, all of it seemed suddenly impossible to voice now. He didn't know what to say.

"Come on, kid, speak up," Bill said with a roll of his eye. "We haven't got all day—Well, you don't. I on the other hand, have an eternity it would seem."

Dipper barely had time to think about it, his mouth spouting the first question that came to mind. "Do you know what's been going on with Gravity Falls?"

Bill raised an eyebrow. "Well, how could I? I've been locked down here."

"Well, yeah," Dipper fumbled. "But I thought you knew everything. Saw everything."

"Ah, you see, that _used_ to be the case," Bill said, his tone turning slightly bitter. "That is until _someone_ sewed shut my all seeing eye. Now all I have is...well, just a regular seeing eye."

"So you don't know anything," Dipper said, disappointment ebbing at his chest.

"Give me a break, kid!" Bill shouted, voice suddenly loud, reverberating around the room. Dipper winced. "I still know things, just not _everything_ anymore. For instance," Bill said, rolling his head to the side. "I know your sister isn't safe. All these monsters and ghouls running about, this is quite the dangerous place to live, you know."

Dipper swore ice had filled his stomach. He swallowed, tried to focus. _He's trying to trick you_ , he told himself. _He's a demon, that's what he does. Mabel's safe, you know that._

"Mabel's fine," he said out loud. "She can take care of herself."

Bill raised his eyebrows. Dipper couldn't blame him, even he didn't think he sounded convincing.

"Is that why you're so keen on trying to protect her?" Bill asked.

"I _can_ protect her," Dipper said, perhaps a bit too quickly. "But I know she can take care of herself if I'm not around."

Bill reared back in his chains, his mouth opened wide as a high-pitch cackle rang out against the ceiling. He was laughing at him. His chest heaving, his voice loud and mocking. Bill was _laughing_ at him.

" _No!_ " Bill yelled, falling forward again, making Dipper jump. "You may _think_ you can protect her, you may _think_ you know things, like how to keep her safe and how to take down little monsters like that ogre in town today—"

Dipper's heart fell into his stomach. "H-How did you—"

"But the one thing that you need to remember, Pine Tree," Bill continued as if Dipper had never said a word. "The one thing that you _always_ need to remember is that what you _think_ you know, and what I _know_ I know are two completely different things. And I _know_ , for a fact, that your sister is not safe."

Dipper stared up at Bill, wide-eyed. Bill grinned back down at him, taunting him, mocking him. Dipper thought of Mabel sleeping upstairs, sound as anything, cuddled with her pig on the couch. _Don't listen to him._ Dipper blinked, not sure he could follow his own advice.

"What do you know about dimensions?" the question left his mouth before he could stop it. He suddenly felt very desperate. "A-About breaching them, traveling between them?"

"Why?" Bill purred. "Looking to take a trip somewhere, Pine Tree?"

"I just," Dipper paused, fumbling for the right words. "I need to know how much you know. I need to know if I can trust you to...to help protect Mabel."

"Hm, you see I'd love to help you, but there is still the question of what am I getting out of it," Bill said, his voice gloating. "I'm a demon, kid, I don't exactly just give things away for free."

Dipper swallowed, knowing he'd regret his next question. "What do you want?"

Bill grinned down at him, barring all his teeth. He began to swing back and forth, his chains creaking, his eye swaying in and out of the light. He began to sing, something high-pitched and lilting.

_Key flies in without a sound,_

_Key flies in without a sound_

Dipper's brows drew together. "What, you mean let you go?"

Bill never answered, simply smiled and swung back and forth in his chains, like a child on a swing, continuing to hum the high tune under his breath, muttering words Dipper couldn't hear. All the while, Bill watched him, his gold eye flickering in the dark.

Dipper looked up at Bill, his heart beginning to pick up pace in his chest, as Bill continued to swing back and forth, humming happily. Dipper sighed and dropped his head to rub a hand over his face. He was tired. He was exhausted and injured and not thinking straight. He shouldn't even be down here in the first place, what was he thinking? Whispers filled his ears, small mutterings of different voices, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, like a swarm of buzzing wings, nagging in his ear. He was growing lightheaded, swaying on his feet. He really needed to get to sleep. He needed to get out of this basement and into his own bed.

Everything faded to black momentarily, like reality had fizzled out.

"Make a deal with him."

Dipper froze. He looked up, staring at Bill, who'd stopped swinging and was now hanging stock still in the middle of the room, staring down at Dipper. Bill had just spoke, his mouth had just moved, but whatever voice had come out of it was definitely _not_ Bill's. Dipper blinked up at Bill, unsure what to do. Bill stared back, blank-faced and oblivious.

"Wh-What did you just say?" he croaked.

"I don't make deals, I place bets," another voice, faint and completely alien came from behind Dipper.

He spun around, his heart racing in his throat. His flashlight swept over broken machinery and bare concrete floor, casting wild, jumping shadows. Dipper heaved breaths, wondering where the hell that voice had come from, only he couldn't see a damn thing. There was nothing down here. Nothing besides, him...and Bill.

Dipper spun back around, training his flashlight on Bill, only to have it land on empty air. Dipper panted, gasping for air, panic rising in his chest. The chains that had held Bill hung empty from the ceiling, the ones on the floor limp like dead metal snakes. Bill was gone. He was just freaking gone, vanished, leaving nothing behind but his swinging chains.

Dipper spun around to look behind him again, only to find he was no longer in the basement beneath the Shack. The Shack had disappeared, just like Bill, replaced by a massively white space. His eyes spun in their sockets, flitting from one thing to the next, taking everything in as his heart raced in his chest. The best description he could give was that he was in some sort of office building, only everything was inhumanly white with not a drop of color anywhere in sight. A long corridor stretched on in front of him, doors on either side. He could hear voices ahead, mutterings from down the hall.

They were talking about something. Something important.

 

Dipper jerked awake in his desk chair, his head snapping up, his knees hitting the underside of his desk. Reality came crashing down on him and he let out a groan, rubbing at the crick in his neck that came from sleeping with his his head thrown over the back of his chair. Everything ached, his ribs especially. He tried not to upset them too much as he sat up in his chair, cursing himself all the while. Something drifted in his mind, something weird about a dream, but he couldn't really focus on it. The thought flitted away, the dream lost before he could even remember it.

Instead, memories ran through his head of the conversation he'd had with Bill the night before. That's probably why he was so jumpy he thought, everything Bill had said must've gotten to him, must've wormed its way into his subconscious somehow.

Hefting a sigh, Dipper slumped forward, pulling his hand away from his neck as he blinked the sleep from his eyes. All the haze cleared away, his desk coming into focus, along with the dark green iguana that was currently lounging on top of all his research, staring at him with the most unamused face he'd ever seen.

"Hey, Soph," Dipper yawned, reaching forward to give the lizard a scratch behind her head. She never moved, not even after he took his hand back and leaned back in his chair.

Dipper glanced to the papers beneath her scaly feet, the ones he'd been reading before he fell asleep. Headlines and printed out reports and hand-scribbled notes covered his desk in a flood. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. That's right, he'd been researching dimensions and anything else that might prove to be a source of abnormalities. Ever since his talk with Bill, he'd been trying to do research, staying up through the night to find some last ditch chance of figuring this out on his own, but he was only going in circles. Sure, there was enough research and speculation about different dimensions, but nothing about how they worked in conjunction with one another and how they might end up leaking into each other.

Dipper let out another yawn, letting his hand drop. He looked at the clock. It was five o'clock in the afternoon. He let out a groan.

When the twins had moved into the Shack, Dipper had taken Ford's old room, or the "secret room" as it was originally called. Mabel had taken the attic, being the only room in the house big enough to hold all her art and cosplay projects. Stan's room remained untouched, the door locked shut, no one willing mention it, but the both of them knowing why they ignored the room all the same. They kept it the same, untampered, for when Stan came back. If he came back.

Meanwhile, Dipper had turned Ford's room into a living journal, the walls papered with papers and articles filled with research, red yarn strung between them haphazardly in a desperate but useless attempt to connect the dots. He'd been looking into dimensional research for months now, trying to find some sort of source for the steady increase in anomalies, but nothing had come up. He was at a dead end, all of his options burnt out—well, most of his options burnt out, Dipper reminded himself. An image flashed in his mind of a man in chains, suspended from the ceiling, cackling wildly.

Dipper looked to his lizard, still staring at him, unamused.

"What do you think, Sophia? Think I can figure out all the mysteries to Gravity Falls...again."

She didn't answer.

"Yeah," he sighed, looking at his mess of a desk. "Me neither."

She made an irritated clicking sound at him, her expression unchanging.

He snorted. "Alright, alright," Dipper sighed as he heaved himself out of his chair, grimacing as his ribs jabbed his side in pain. "I get it. Let's get some food, then."

Five minutes later, Dipper shuffled out of his room in a clean (well, clean is relative, so let's just call them new) set of clothes, a cranky lizard wrapped securely around his neck. He padded through the house and towards the kitchen, passing through the living room, where a rather disheveled looking Mabel was lounging on the couch.

"Oh, rise and shine, Dip Dip!" she called as he came into the room. "Nice to see you up before six."

Dipper rolled his eyes, walking over to ruffle Mabel's already messy hair. Her movements were slow and sleepy and she didn't look much different than when Dipper had left her on the couch the night before. She'd probably only woken up a few minutes ago, just like him. "Whatever you say, Sleeping Beauty," he teased.

"Damn straight I'm a beauty," Mabel said, rubbing at her eyes.

"We get any calls today?" Dipper asked.

She shook her head, a shuddering yawn escaping her as she stretched her arms over her head.

Dipper let out a sigh. "Well that's a small blessing," he muttered, cradling his ribs. 

Calls for jobs after big incidents like the ogre from yesterday weren't especially common. Whatever troubles the townsfolk had could usually wait until the town had been pieced back together by the authorities and government.

"Hey," Dipper said, giving his sister a nudge before she fell back asleep. "Wanna order Chinese and watch a movie?"

She gave a sleepy sigh and nodded. "Yes, please. Oh, I rented all five Duck-tective movies the other day. Haven't watched them yet."

Dipper smiled. "What are they? Like ten years old now?"

"It's so retro and cheesy," Mabel agreed.

"Sounds perfect," he laughed and moved to continued on into the kitchen.

Ten minutes later, and Sophia was gorging herself on spinach in the kitchen while Waddles happily buried his snout in a tupperware of blended left-overs. Mabel and Dipper sat on the couch, backs against either arm and legs tangled with each other, a bowl of popcorn balanced between them as they waited for their food to be delivered, the first movie already in the DVD player and past the opening credits.

Dipper watched the TV, only half-interested as the jogger on screen came across a dead body in the middle of Central Park. His mind was wandering. Wandering to places it shouldn't, of his notes across the house in his room, of his research, of dimensions and portals and a one-eyed man in chains buried in their basement under a mountain of spells and lies. He knew talking to Bill had been a bad idea, because now his head was full of all the things the demon had said, of all the things he _hadn't_ said. He knew letting Bill go just to get information was a bad idea, but still what else were they supposed to do? He was out of ideas, out of research material, and out of options. Bill might be their last chance at saving this town.

Dipper was so caught up in his own thoughts, he didn't even realize the dozen or so pieces of popcorn Mabel had already tossed at him. It wasn't until one nailed him in the eye that he snapped out of his concentrated musings. Dipper flinched, looking down at himself to find his lap filled with popcorn.

"It's about time," Mabel huffed from the other end of the couch. "I thought you'd gone braindead."

"Yeah, you wish," Dipper said, picking up one of the pieces of popcorn from his lap and throwing it at her.

"No, actually, I don't," Mabel retorted, throwing another piece of popcorn at him. "Because then I'd have to take care of your stupid lizard." 

"Hey, I'll have you know iguanas are highly intelligent creatures," Dipper said, this time electing to pick up an entire handful of popcorn and throw it at her.

"Is that why we had to take her to the vet because she ate your shoelace?" Mabel said, throwing her own handful of popcorn.

"Hey!" Dipper ducked his head at the projectiles, throwing his next handful of popcorn blindly.

Mabel giggled and threw another handful, popcorn falling everywhere. It was then Dipper upended the bowl right over Mabel's head, earning him an offended gasp and a slap to the shoulder, the two quickly dissolving into a brawl that had them both on the floor struggling with each other. Mabel rolled on top of him, careful of her knees at his ribs as she held his wrists above his head.

"Ha! Pinned ya!" she declared, grinning down at him.

There came a knock at the door, and Mabel glanced up, her attention momentarily distracted. Dipper took the opportunity and flipped her, the two switching positions.

"First rule of fighting," he gloated. "Never let your guard down."

"Dipper," she whined, wriggling under him. "Get off, that's probably the food."

The knock came again.

"Looks like you're going to miss dinner then," Dipper grinned, leaping off Mabel and making a bee-line for the front door.

"Dipper! Get back here!" Mabel called, scrambling after him.

He was nearly to the entryway when a hand latched around his ankle, bringing him down with a crash. A hiss escaped him, his ribs searing with pain. He laughed when Mabel scrambled to her feet and ran for the door.

"Oh, no you don't," Dipper muttered, grabbing her leg as she ran by. She skittered on the wood floor, socked feet slipping and sending her down with a squeal. The fight to the door deteriorated, the two crawling over one another to get there first, shouting and giggling and cursing as elbows and knees connected with one another, sock-clad toes slipping on slick floors and fingers reaching for the door.

By the time they actually made it, they were a mess, heaving and sweating on the floor and all but in tears from laughing so hard. Dipper had the longest arms, so he was the one that reached up and opened the door, neither in a state to stand. The door swung open and the delivery man took a while to notice them, but when he did, he nearly jumped out of his skin. Dipper couldn't quite blame him, but he really didn't have the breath to explain.

"So," he said, grinning up at the man between panting breaths. "Do you take cash or credit?"

* * *

They were two movies in and Waddles was snuffling around the living room, gladly cleaning up their popcorn fight as Sophia lounged on the back of the couch across from Dipper, Mabel feeding her bits of broccoli from her delivery box every now and then as she cooed gently. Dipper had been working on his second box of lo mein when Mabel nudged him with her foot. He looked up, wide-eyed and looking eloquent with greasy noodles hanging sloppily from his mouth.

Mabel was working her way through her own box of fried rice with broccoli, shoveling in mouthfuls with her chopsticks. A few pieces of popcorn were stuck in her hair and her sweater was littered with a few missed bits of rice. She didn't look up at him, continuing to eat like she'd been starving.

"Sorry about your ribs," she said between mouthfuls.

Dipper blinked, snapping out of his oblivious stare and slurping the rest of his noodles into his mouth. "It's fine," he said. "It's not that bad anyways," he lied.

Mabel's chopsticks paused, clicking together as she left them on the corner of her box. She stared down at her food, still refusing to look up at him. "And, um, about yesterday."

Dipper's brows came in to meet, wondering what she was talking about.

Mabel lifted her head, wiping at the grease on her chin as she looked around the living room, her eyes flitting about like she was trying to look everywhere but Dipper. "I'm sorry about what I said yesterday," she sighed like she wary to say it. "I was tired and I...I shut you out. I'm sorry."

Dipper blinked at her, their conversation from yesterday filtering in to his head. The fight with the ogre had been brutal and seemed so long ago, he'd almost forgotten about the argument he and Mabel had had in the alleyway afterwards.

"Hey," he said, gently nudging her back with his foot. She looked back at him finally, the light form the TV flashing in her large brown eyes. "It's alright," he said. "It's fine," he said with a shrug. "It's all, just, fine."

"I know, I know," she sighed, closing her eyes. "I just," she paused, her shoulders sagging as she looked down into her box. "When you say stuff like that, it worries me, Dipper. You just sound so reckless and stupid."

"Yeah, well you  _are_ reckless and stupid," Dipper grinned, expertly using his chopsticks to flick a noodle at her. 

"Gross," she laughed, wiping noodle slime off her face. "But really, Dips, I'm serious. You say that stuff and you start to sound like Ford and it scares me."

Dipper looked at his sister, shadows falling across her scratched and bruised face as the sun sank ever closed to the horizon. Despite sleeping through the night and through most of the day, she looked tired, worry-lines etched into her face that usually weren't there. 

"Hey," he said, nudging her again.

She looked up at him, her eyebrows drawn.

"I'm not going anywhere, you know that, right?"

"Yeah," she sighed, looking back down at her food.

"Besides, I have to stick around," Dipper said, shrugging his shoulders as he fed another round of noodles into his mouth. "Who else do you have to bother you?" he asked, raising his foot to wiggle his sock covered toe into her ear.

"Ew!" she laughed, pushing him away. "Your feet stink!"

"Yeah, well, you really need to brush your hair," he laughed, throwing another noodle to land on top of her head.

She slapped his leg. "And you really need to shower."

"We _both_ need to shower," Dipper said.

Mabel gave a indistinct noise that sounded vaguely consenting, throwing her head back against the arm of the couch. "Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow."

They sat like that for a few minutes, Dipper and Mabel on the couch, legs tangled, the air filled with the clicking of chopsticks. Duck-tective quacked, the subtitles flashing on the bottom of the screen. Mabel laughed, slumped against the arm of the couch, her legs wiggling underneath him.

The sun had sunk beneath the horizon, the only light coming from the television, it's bluish glow casting everything in an erie light. The illuminated images flickered over Dipper's face as he stared at the end of the couch, all but ignoring the TV. Waddles had fallen asleep on his side next to the couch, snorting every now and then. Mabel was breathing evenly, her chest rising and falling gently, her empty carton of food having fallen to the floor. Even Sophia had curled up on the back corner of the couch, her scaly sides rising and falling in an easy rhythm.

The end credits of the third movie began to roll, not that Dipper gave it any notice. Mabel continued to sleep, her face calm and peaceful. Band-aids plastered her cheeks and forehead, the bruise along her jaw even darker than before and looking painfully tender. The credits ended, and then flickered to a blue screen. Mabel muttered something in her sleep and turned onto her side, dead to the world. Dipper looked down at Mabel, oblivious to everything as she slept soundly. Words rang in his head, unwarranted and invasive.

 

_"Your sister is not safe."_

 

_"When you say stuff like that, it worries me, Dipper."_

 

 _"You may_ think _you can protect her."_

 

_"You start to sound like Ford."_

 

_"I'm a demon, kid, I don't exactly give things away for free."_

 

Dipper sighed, looking down at his sister, a tight, nervous feeling in his chest. She shifted again and he caught a glimpse of the bracelet on her wrist again, the beads glowing feebly in the dark. He set aside his fast food box before carefully untangling their legs and pulling himself out from under her. She never even stirred, simply mumbled incoherently as she settled back onto the couch. He slipped out of the living room, television still blue. Floorboards creaked under his feet and his socks made a soft whispering sound as he made his way through the Shack. A door creaked open as he made his way inside, it's hinges rusty from lack of use, the room all but pitch black. Dipper made his way to the corner of the room from memory, his fingers finding the latch to a desk drawer. The metal drawer screeched as it was pulled open, it's mouth stretched wide.

Dipper looked inside, what little moonlight that fell in through the window illuminating what lay at the bottom of Stan's desk drawer. A key glinted up at him, rusted and carved with ruins and spells. Otherwise known as the only thing capable of releasing a certain demon from his bonds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue is so hard and I want to die.


	3. All for Freedom and for Pleasure

A pink cat clock hung on the wall of the kitchen, curtesy of Mabel who'd found it at a flee market and named it Sir Charles Whiskerton before bringing it home. It's hands pointed out the late hour, its tail ticking back and forth, its eyes knocking between the two people seated at the kitchen table. Its loud ticks filled the kitchen, marking every second like the countdown to an execution. The dull kitchen light cast everything in muted colors. Dipper set the glass of water down on the table with a gentle _thunk_. He slid it across from him, glass dragging over wood until he let it come to a stop right in front of the seat opposite him. Mabel and Waddles were still sleeping in the living room, completely unaware of the dream demon sat across from Dipper at the kitchen table.

Bill watched Dipper, showing no sign he even noticed the glass of water. Bill looked just as bad out of his chains as he did in them, though the light did give him a bit more color. His hair had been pushed out of his face, greasy and ragged, allowing his face to be cast into horribly sharp focus. He was thin, his cheeks hollow and his skin, as dark as it was, turned nearly translucent. Dipper could now see Bill's blind eye up close, the scar garish against his skin, the lid sealed shut. His other eye was wide open, lashes fluttering over a bright gold iris, the only thing about Bill that hadn't lost its color. That single eye watched Dipper, trained on him unwaveringly. All the while Bill never moved an inch, inhumanly still.

Dipper blinked. His fingers twitched on the tabletop. He felt like a bug pinned under a microscope. It was like electricity charged the air, a sort of tension stretched so tight, he was afraid it might snap. He wasn't sure what to say. What were you supposed to say to the man that's been held prisoner in your basement for a decade? What _can_ you say? Bill continued to stare at him.

The clock ticked, the cat's tail clicking back and forth, back and forth. The Shack creaked, water pipes moaning in the night, the attic floor moaning as the wind pressed against the house. The hairy fairy in the living room rattled in its cage. Waddles snorted, pink snout snuffling in his sleep.

"Where's your hat?"

Dipper blinked, surprised by the sudden question, like someone managed to snip the tension with a pair of scissors, letting it fall straight out of the air. "What?" he croaked.

"Your hat," Bill said, nodding towards Dipper's shaggy hair. "It's gone."

"I lost it earlier, uh, in town," Dipper said, ducking his head and running his hand over the back of his head. "It'll turn up. Someone will find it and bring it back. They usually do."

"You loose your hat in town often?"

"Tends to happen," Dipper shrugged, thinking back to the ogre, the hellhounds, the flesh-eating swarm of fairies, all of which resulted in a missing hat that was eventually returned to him.

"Oh dear," Bill tutted, leaning towards the table and wrapping slender fingers around the glass of water. "Well, how am I supposed to call you Pine Tree without your pine tree?" he asked, bringing the glass to his lips.

"You could just call me by my name."

Bill snorted into his glass like it was the most ridiculous idea in the world. "Yeah, right," he said, setting the glass back on the table.

Bill glanced down, his eye landing on Dipper's forearms, exposed by the rolled up sleeves of his hoodie. He'd taken off the bandages from the day before, the soft underside of his forearms scratched to hell and showing pieces of red and white that usually hid underneath smooth skin. Large, sore scabs had already started congealing over the open wounds and Dipper knew from experience that if he didn't pick at them, they would take about two weeks to heal. The ribs on the other hand, those might take a while.

But that wasn't what Bill was looking at. Lines traced over the top of Dipper's left forearm, creating a large circle of various symbols with an illuminati-like triangle suspended in the middle. Dipper felt his face flush.

Bill smirked at his own summoning circle inked on Dipper's arm. "Nice tattoo, kid."

Dipper rolled his eyes. "Don't flatter yourself."

"You miss me?" Bill asked, leaning forward on the table, the biggest grin on his face.

"It has nothing to do with you."

"Oh really?"

Dipper looked at Bill. He sighed, dropping his gaze and drumming his fingers, muscles twitching under his inked skin. "It's," he paused, looking for the right words, "a keepsake. A reminder, I guess." Dipper's thoughts flitted to another tattoo running across his side over his ribs, black lines broken by scars, spelling out the words _Trust No One_.

"And it looks cool," Bill said, nodding his head to the side.

Dipper rolled his eyes again, the smallest bit of heat creeping up his neck.

Bill grinned and brought his glass to his lips again. "Admit it kid, I have good tastes."

"Mmm," Dipper hummed. "I've seen your tastes and trust me, they leave a lot to be desired."

"Says the kid that's been wearing the same hat for ten years."

"Says the demon that turned my town into a LSD nightmare."

"Yes," Bill purred, malice right beneath the surface. "But now I'm a pathetic, useless, defenseless, deteriorating sack of bones like the rest of you."

Dipper paused, blinking at Bill across the table. Bill set his glass on the table a bit too forcefully, the water inside sloshing. The clock on the wall continued to tick, its eyes moving between Bill and Dipper, the two of lined up on either side of a battlement.

Dipper swallowed. What was happening here? Two seconds ago, he and Bill had been talking like normal people. Like people who knew each other, who knew how to fling remarks back and forth like it was the easiest thing in the world. And what was so weird was how _easy_ it was, how naturally it'd come to him. Like two peaces of a puzzle fitting together.

But then it came to a screeching stop. And now Bill was snarling at his glass, his attitude having swung like a pendulum. Volatile. Unpredictable. Dangerous.

Dipper watched Bill carefully. "Why do you hate us so much?"

"I don't hate you," Bill said to his glass.

"Really?" Dipper asked, his voice raising slightly. "Because tearing my family apart and trying to destroy our reality sounds a bit like hate."

"Yeah, well, so does locking up and torturing me for the past ten years," Bill said, finally looking up at him.

"Torture," Dipper snorted. "That's rich from you."

Bill's eye flashed, the shadows on his face darkening. "It's what it is."

"Just what makes you think what we did was torture?"

"You've kept me trapped, bound in chains, underneath you house for a decade, Pine Tree," Bill said, leaning forward, his tone growing heated. "Without food, without water or sunlight—"

"It's not exactly like you needed those things," Dipper snapped. Even as a human, Bill was practically immortal. In all his years locked in the basement, he'd never once eaten or drank, and yet here he was, alive as ever.

"Yeah well the sentiment would've been nice," Bill said, flashing a grin that held no warmth. "You kept me down there for ten years, bound like an animal."

"That was not torture."

"What was it then?"

Dipper didn't answer right away. He leaned back in his seat, letting out a huff of air through his nose. He looked away, unable to meet Bill's eye. "A precaution."

"A precaution against _what_ , exactly?" Bill sneered. "What could I possibly do in this body that I haven't already done? What further punishment could you possibly give me?"

"You've killed people, nearly destroyed the city—"

"Casualties," Bill said. "All sacrifices for the greater good—"

"Oh," Dipper said, and he could feel the sarcasm rising in his voice. "The greater good involves nearly obliterating the planet, does it?

"Well, _my_ greater good does," Bill said with a shrug of his shoulders.

"You manipulated Mabel—"

"Pshh. A game of charades."

"You burned the journals, my great uncle's life's work—"

"I needed kindling," Bill said. He put on an exaggerated pout. "I was cold."

"You're disgusting," Dipper sneered.

There was a pause, a few muted moments where no one said anything and Bill just contemplated Dipper with a keen eye. Finally, Bill let out a sigh and leaned back in his chair, acting like it was a throne.

"You know, you hold onto grudges for an unhealthy amount of time, Pine Tree," he said. "Everything that happened to your family is water under the bridge."

"You tried to kill us."

"I try to kill everyone, kid. Don't take it too personally. And the journals—they're gone, in the past, liquidated, annihilated, obliterated, _caput_. Stop crying over stupid human things. Besides," he sighed, reaching for his glass again, "last I heard, you were having no trouble re-writing them again."

"How do you know that?"

"A little rat whispers things in my ear, just call me Bill-derella," he grinned, taking a sip from his glass. He swallowed and pulled a face, looking at the glass like it'd offended him. "Why isn't this vodka?"

"Bill."

Bill sighed and put his glass down before giving Dipper and exasperated look. "The walls are thin in this house, Pine Tree. It gets quiet down there, you know," he nodded towards the floor. "I hear things now and then. Lots of things."

Dipper tried to repress the sickening feeling pooling in his stomach. Knowing Bill might have been listening in to his and Mabel's conversations over the years made Dipper's stomach roll. He swallowed and never looked away from Bill. "You said you didn't know what was happening to the city."

Bill grinned. "I lied."

"What have you heard."

"I've heard that this city is going to shit in a handbag."

Dipper sighed and leaned back in his chair, trying not to visualize Bill's botched metaphor. "Creatures are coming here from other dimensions. A lot more than from before you tried to rip reality apart—"

" _Allegedly_ tried to rip reality apart."

"We just need to know what's letting them in to reality," Dipper plowed on. "Why these monsters are coming through."

"So that's why you were asking about dimensions," Bill mused. "Maybe your uncle just didn't patch up the rift as well as you thought he did."

Dipper glared at Bill, blinking at him slowly from across the table. When he spoke, his tone was dangerous. "My uncle did not make mistakes. After he closed the rift that _you_ made, nothing came in or out of this dimension for nearly four years. Now anomalies are coming through here like they're being lead on parade."

"Maybe it's the town, it's always attracted weirdos," Bill shrugged. "I mean, it explains why you're here."

"Something is ripping holes in reality," Dipper insisted, "and letting all that weirdness spill over here. We need to find out what it is and you're the only person I can think of that could help us."

Bill's eye flashed. A small, slow smile slunk onto his face. He didn't respond, simply leaned back in his chair, regarding Dipper with a calm expression. Dipper began to wonder if Bill was ever going to answer. The cat continued to tick. Back and forth. Back and forth.

Dipper nearly jumped out of his skin when a smile jumped to Bill's face, wide and open and perfect, as if it'd been carved there, the sudden movement taking him by surprise.

Bill purred, leaning towards the table. "Where is the rest of the Pines family?" he sang.

"Why?" Dipper bit at him. "Looking for a reunion?"

"Not really, just wondering why you haven't asked all your little friends to help you instead."

Dipper glared at him. The cat ticked. Bill raised his eyebrows. 

"So where are they?" he asked. "Question mark, Red, Stanley-Stanford Pines, Sixer, they have to be _somewhere_."

"That's not really something you need to know."

Bill's lips curled into a smile that looked more like a sneer than anything else. His eye twitched and Dipper saw his hands tense up for a split second before relaxing again.

"Okay," Bill said, nodding like he didn't agree. "Fine. Then at least tell me where Sixer is," he said, eye landing on Dipper again. "I _at least_ deserve to know that."

Dipper blinked at Bill. He took a breath, letting it go before answering. "Ford is dead."

Bill blinked, the anger draining out of him all at once, his face blanching. He stared at Dipper, eye wide and uncomprehending. He could only sit in silence, frozen, doing nothing, saying nothing. And then his face broke, his lips suddenly curling into a sneer, his eye flashing dangerously.

"You're lying."

"I'm not," Dipper said, his fingers curling into a fist. "Stanford Pines is dead. I watched it happen. I saw him buried. He's dead."

Bill glared at Dipper, his single eye flitting over his face, taking in every movement, drinking in every detail, straining to find any proof of a lie. Dipper never flinched, simply matching Bill's gaze calmly. Bill's face stiffened, his sneer deepening. His fingers began to shake.

"Fine," he spat. "He's dead. That doesn't excuse the fact that you still lied to me."

"I never lied to—"

"You said you'd release me," Bill shouted, slamming his hand on the table, making Dipper jump. Bill's chest rose and fell rapidly, his nostrils flaring and his eye burning. "You said if I helped you, you'd set me free. That's what you said when you took me down from hanging from the ceiling like a Christmas ham. And as far as I'm aware, you can't do that without Sixer."

"I meant set you free of your chains," Dipper explained, keeping his tone even. "And I did that."

" _You know that's not what I meant_ ," Bill roared.

Dipper didn't flinch. He simply kept his gaze level as he looked at an enraged Bill. "Well then," he said, standing up. "I guess you should have gotten that in writing." His chair slid backwards, its feet scraping over the wood floor. He turned to get himself a glass of water and, in all retrospect, that had probably been his stupidest decision he'd made all night.

Bill was out of his sight for no more than half a second when his world exploded. The glass of water Dipper had left with Bill slammed into the side of his head, shattering on impact. Shards of glass tinkled to the floor, water cut at his face, and Dipper staggered, the impact knocking him off balance. The world grew blurry for a moment and he felt blood and water trickle down his face. There was a ringing in his ears, like a fire alarm going off, only there was no fire.

Dipper gasped, desperately trying to regain his balance as he stumbled alongside the counter. He heard Bill chuckle from across the kitchen, dark and rolling, like thunder before a storm strikes.

"Pine Tree, Pine Tree, Pine Tree," Bill sang. "When are you going to learn?"

Dipper reached out, fumbling blindly along the counter before his fingers wrapped around something solid and cold. Footsteps creaked over wooden floorboards. Glancing down at his hand, Dipper realized all he'd grabbed was a fork, rather meager for a weapon, but it wasn't exactly as if he had the luxury of time.

"You _never_ back out of a deal with me," Bill muttered, his lips suddenly pressed against Dipper's ear.

Dipper's heart leapt into his throat. He spun, his arm shooting out on instinct. He felt his fork sink into something, and the next thing he knew, he was slammed backwards, the counter bitting into his lower back, his already broken ribs screaming like they were on fire. A crushing grip on his wrist forced his fist open and his hand back. He glanced down to find his fork buried deep in Bill's shoulder.

Bill glanced at the injury, looking unimpressed as blood was already seeping into his shirt. "You know," he said, looking back to lear at Dipper, "It's funny how you still think that works."

Bill let go of Dipper's wrist just long enough to grab the front of Dipper's hoodie in fistfuls. Bill dragged him forward and to the side before slamming him into the fridge with terrifying strength. Magnets and post-it notes clattered to the floor. In the next moment, Bill had lifted Dipper off the ground, his feet dangling as Bill held him against the fridge.

"You think this is a joke, kid?" he hissed, his face pressed so close to Dipper's, he could feel his breath crawling over his cheek. "Do you have _any_ idea what it's like to be trapped inside this disgusting, diminutive, insufficient excuse for a body? To be burdened with grand, unending power, only to have it trapped inside this-this _meat sack_?"

"I had nothing to do with that," Dipper gasped as he clawed at Bill's hands, still fisted in his hoodie. His head was spinning and his chest hurt, his feet kicking uselessly against the fridge door.

Bill's hand seized hold of Dipper's face, Bill's single hand still fisted in the hoodie keeping Dipper suspended as his fingernails bit into Dipper's cheek.

"If you really think that," Bill growled. "Then you're just another single minded, reality bound, rotting sack of skin, just like the rest of them."

"Yeah," Dipper croaked, forcing his brown eyes open to look right into Bill's raging gold one. "And now you're one of us."

Bill roared. He spun and flung Dipper across the kitchen, sending him sprawling over a chair and onto the floor. Dipper's head connected with the wooden floor, the second impact finally managing to scramble his brains. He blacked out for a split second, everything growing fuzzy and distant. Dipper tried to focus through the screaming pain in his head and the fire that consumed his side as he rolled over, the remnants of a destroyed kitchen chair digging into his back.

He blinked, everything coming into blurry focus as Bill stood at the kitchen counter, holding a long and lethal looking bread knife in front of him, inspecting it with mild interest. "Pine Tree," he said, running a finger along the knife. "I _really_ don't like it when people lie to me. Just what are we going to do with you, hm?" he tutted. He tossed the knife to his other hand, the blade spinning, its jagged teeth like a gator's open maw. Bill began walking towards him, knife brandished, footsteps slow and deliberate as an inhuman grin stretched his face. He began to hum, the same, high-pitched stilted tune Dipper had heard before.

_Let the lie escape your throat_

Dipper scrambled backwards, the splinters and broken glass littering the floor digging into this hands and slicing open skin. Blood spilled over the kitchen floor, turning everything slippery.

_Circus dances open roads_

Bill just grinned wider before simply taking another step forward to finally stand over Dipper. The knife caught the light, barring its teeth at him.

_Seal the spell: there must be blood—_

_Wack!_

The sound of something wooden and hard connecting with something solid cut Bill's words short as he froze. Bill continued to stand over Dipper, suspended for barely a moment before tipping forward ever so slowly and falling onto the kitchen floor next to him, unconscious as the knife clattered harmlessly to the floor.

Dipper took a couple of quick, panicked breaths as he stared at Bill in shock before looking up to where the demon had been standing. Mabel stood over him, a baseball bat in her hand, its tip resting against the floor. Dipper looked up at her, his chest heaving and his eyes wide. She glared back, breathing hard, both hands gripping the bat, hair falling in her face.

"What did I say," she said between gasps, "about letting loose the dorito demon locked in the basement?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, guys, I just really like the idea of older Dipper with tattoos.


	4. A Hangman's Knot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooo, it's been a while. Yeah, sorry about that, it's just been really busy over break and my family went on vacation out of the country so I didn't even have internet for a week. Ntm all the ship weeks that were going on, as well as a few personal problems but *sigh* yeah. I should be back to posting more frequently. Again, sorry, but I hope you guys stick around to read what's next!

Bill woke to a headache. Perhaps headache was a bit too gentle a term. Bill woke to his head being split open by a searing, agonizing pain throbbing inside his skull. He let out a groan, the side of his face pressed against a corse, cushy fabric.

Now, usually, he still thought pain was hilarious—especially other people's pain. But this pain was different. This pain was not funny, not in the slightest. Sharp pain was funny. Immediate pain was funny. Broken bones and blades against skin and searing burns, now those were hilarious. This, this wasn't even close. This was dull and throbbing and _hurt_.

And now he had a raging headache that pulsed behind his eyes and made his neck ache. Shit, it felt like he was dying. How did humans live like this?

He blinked his eye open, trying to ignore the blinding light that shot spikes right into his skull. He managed to piece together that he was still in the Mystery Shack, and laid up on a discount sofa by the looks of it. He rolled over onto his stomach, groaning, and made a move to get up. The only trouble was, he couldn't.

Bill tried to move his legs. He looked down to find his ankles bound together with a zip-tie. He tried to move his arms, only to find his wrists bound together behind his back in a similar fashion.

No.

Bill's heart kicked into overdrive and he all but started gasping for breaths.

No no no no no no _no!_

This was _not_ happening. Ten years. _Ten years_ he'd spent locked in chains before being set free, only to end up tied up by _plastic_ on the _couch_ of his arch nemeses a few hours later. And with all the time he'd spent stagnant in the dungeon for so long, even if he wasn't magically bound, he still had nowhere near the strength to break his bonds. All his power, all his unending knowledge and magic and strength, and he was rendered useless by a pair of kids and strips of plastic. This was maddening, this was infuriating and utterly ridiculous and unfair.

This was _bullshit_.

Bill seized, arching up on the couch, pulling against his bonds that wouldn't break. He thrashed, flopping on the couch like a beached fish. The zip-ties dug into his skin and his headache pounded inside his head. He twisted his wrists and kicked his legs, but nothing worked. There was no doubt about it, he was trapped. Again.

Eventually, Bill fell still, his chest heaving against the couch cushions, his nostrils flaring, frustration building so rapidly and violently in his gut, he thought he might explode. Bill buried his face into the couch cushion and screamed.

* * *

"Sounds like someone's up," Dipper muttered, the muffled screams of Bill able to reach them even in the kitchen.

Dipper and Mabel sat in two of the few remaining kitchen chairs facing each other, a first aid kit open in Mabel's lap as she bent over Dipper's outstretched hand, picking bits of glass and splintered wood out of his palm.

" _You_ do not get to speak," Mabel threatened, seated across from Dipper. "You're speaking privileges have been revoked."

Dipper hissed as his sister yanked out another piece of glass none too gently with her tweezers. Blood seeped from the wound, spilling over his palm as his fingers twitched. She leaned over and dropped the glass into a cereal bowl on the kitchen table to tinkle with the dozen or so other shards she'd already extracted.

"Mabel, could you—"

"I said zip it, mister!" Mabel said, shooting him a glare.

"But—

"No."

"But it's—"

"Nuh-uh."

"Could you—"

"STOP IT."

"Mabel, careful!" he said, wincing as she yanked out another shard of glass from his hand.

Mabel shot him a glare. "I wouldn't _have_ to be careful if a certain idiot brother of mine hadn't let loose a certain demonic asshole in our _house_ ," she said, ripping out another shard of glass.

"Alright, alright, alright!" Dipper said, pulling his hand away from Mabel before she could end up doing more damage than good.

Mabel let out a huff, throwing her hands in the air, "What was the one thing I told you not to do, Dipper? The one thing!"

Dipper raised his eyebrows, cradling his wounded hand. "Um, raise the dead?"

She smacked him upside the head.

"Ow! Okay, okay, I get it, I screwed up," he said, ducking out Mabel's range before she could hit him again.

"Oh, that's an understatement."

"I'm an idiot."

"The biggest idiot."

"And I'm sorry," Dipper sighed, dropping his head as shame crawled up his neck.

For a moment, no one said anything. Dipper could feel Mabel's eyes on him, but he was too afraid to look directly at her. Eventually, there came a heavy sigh.

"Give me your hand," she said, her voice more gentle than Dipper expected.

He glanced up at her. She looked at him with those warm brown eyes. Her face had fallen into a gentle look, but the fight was still there. Dipper could still see it there, right below the surface, stowed away simply for his sake.

Moving tenderly, Dipper reached forward, his hand throbbing and leaking blood onto the wooden floor. Mabel took his hand with gentle fingers. Working with a much kinder tone than before, she poured peroxide over his hand, the chemical stinging and fizzing around ragged edges of skin before she wiped away the blood and mess.

"So," Dipper sighed as Mabel began to rummage through the first aid kit. "What are we going to do now?"

"What," she said as she began to bandage his hand with practiced fingers. "You didn't have a plan? Just thought, 'eh, let's let loose the supernatural demonic force that's been trapped under our house for the past ten years and see what happens'?"

"No," Dipper snapped. "I had a plan. Getting the shit beat out of me sort of shot it to hell, though."

She flicked him a glare before looking back to his hand. "Well whatever we do," she said, "we can't just put him back. Bill still has quite a bit of power, even in that body and Ford had all kinds of spells and wards set up to keep him in one spot. When you let him out, you broke them and neither of us know how to put them back. A prison wouldn't even know what to do with him, not to mention he'd probably end up killing all the other inmates."

"Yeah," Dipper sighed, watching as Mabel finished wrapping him up and began to tape down the gauze. He could still hear Bill's muffled grunts and whines from the living room as he flopped about on the couch. For a moment, no one said anything as Dipper watched Mabel work, the cat clock on the wall ticking away happily.

"You know," Dipper started slowly. "We...could let him stay here."

Mabel stilled, her fingers freezing around Dipper's hand. Her face blanched. Even the neon band-aids taped across her cheeks seamed to loose their color. Dipper's stomach sank. Whoops.

Mabel never looked up. "What."

"Look, Mabel, I know it sounds—"

"Insane?" she said, her head snapping up. "Yeah, it does, Dipper. Why don't we go around inviting every crazed psychopath we've come across to come spend the night at our Grunkle's Shack? Remember the banshie from five summers ago? I'm sure she'd _love_ the chance to have another go at us. Dipper, he just tried to kill you twenty minutes ago," Mabel hissed. "He's tried to kill you and me multiple times and you want him to move in with us?"

"Well," Dipper said, wincing slightly. "Technically he's already been living with us this whole time."

"This is _not_ the time for your technicalities, Dipper," she said, jabbing a finger at him. She jabbed it again for emphasis.

"Mabel, look," Dipper sighed, "we're not talking about forever here. Just until we can figure out what to do with him in the long run."

"Oh, just until then," Mabel said, her voice growing hysterical.

"He's our responsibility, Mabel. We're the reason he's in that body."

"No," Mabel said, her tone stern. " _Ford's_ the reason he's in that body, which means we don't owe _him_ , or anyone else anything."

"But wasn't that the whole purpose of putting Bill in that body in the first place?" Dipper asked. "Rehabilitation?"

"The purpose was to make sure he didn't continue running around like the psychopath that he is, trying to kill innocent people. Oh that's right! Like what he just tried to do to you!"

"Well what else are we supposed to do, Mabel?" Dipper asked, slumping back in his seat, frustrated.

She didn't seem to know how to answer that one, but damned if she wasn't going to try. "We," she said, struggling for words, "could...put him in a fruit hat and make him do the macarena."

"I can hear you from here, you know!" Bill called from the living room.

"Argh! Fine!" Mabel said, standing up and throwing her hands up in the air. "Fine! Let the psychopathic demon baby stay with us! Fine! But he's going to be your responsibility, Dipper," she said, aiming another finger at him. "Anything he does is going to be on you. And Waddles and I will have nothing to do with this!"

And with that, Mabel marched out of the kitchen. Dipper could hear the snort and shuffling of Waddles getting up from the floor in the living room and following Mabel obediently up the stairs. Dipper listened to the two of them march upstairs before the door to Mabel's room slammed shut, shaking the house.

Sophia was still laying on the back of the couch in the living room and Dipper heard as she made a clicking sound.

"What did you just say to me?" Bill snapped. "Come over here and fight me, you pathetic excuse for a dragon!"

Dipper let out a sigh and slid further into his chair, leaning his head against the back so he could stare at the ceiling. If his guess was right, he was looking right at the attic, where Mabel was no doubt stomping around her room and throwing a tantrum right now. He could hear as Bill started to argue with the iguana on the couch.

"Great," Dipper muttered. "You get a pig and I get a dream demon."

* * *

"Oh, not you again."

"Bill," Dipper sighed, running a hand down the side of his face. Gauze was taped ever the gash in Dipper's temple from where the water glass had hit and he was eighty-three percent sure he had a concussion. He was so not in the mood to talk to a hyper-dimensional dream demon with the attitude of a five year old.

"I'm not talking to you," Bill said, turning his head away from Dipper to face the back of the couch.

"Look," Dipper said. "We're sort of at a Mexican stand-off, here. I know you want to find a way to get out of that body and Mabel and I want you to, well, not kill anyone."

"Personally, I'm offended that you think I'm that kind of person," Bill said, refusing to turn around.

Dipper gritted his teeth and had to repress the urge to strangle Bill right then and there. Dipper forced himself to take a calming breath, waiting until he could unclench his hands.

"Okay, Bill, here's the thing. You need to stay here, in the Shack, so we can keep an eye on you and make sure you don't go wrecking havoc in all your demonic glory. And I need you to tell me everything you know about dimensions and traveling between realities. In return, after you help us, I will do everything in my power to find a way to get you out of that body and back to your original form. You have my word on that."

"Pine Tree," Bill asked in disbelief. With some wiggling, he turned over on the couch, finally facing Dipper, the most amused smile on his face. "Are you making a deal with me?"

"No," Dipper said, shaking his head. _More like hell no_ , he thought. "Trust me, I've learned not to make any more deals with demons."

"Hm," Bill hummed. "It's always the smart ones that catch on fast."

"I'm making a promise," Dipper said.

Bill raised his eyebrows. "A promise?"

"Yeah, it's like a deal," Dipper shrugged. "But sort of different."

Bill narrowed his eyes at Dipper, like he wasn't sure what to make of this "not deal." He looked Dipper up and down. "So do we need to shake hands—?"

"No," Dipper said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Uh, it's not legally binding or anything. We simply trust each other to keep up our ends."

Bill raised an eyebrow, looking even more disbelieving than before. "And you trust me?"

"No," Dipper said carefully. "But I trust that you'd do anything to get out of that body. And I know that you know that I'm the only person in the world right now with the best chance of doing that."

Bill continued to eye Dipper, as if he wasn't quite sure. He shifted on the couch, as if to test his bonds again. Seconds ticked by as Dipper stood, awkwardly waiting for an answer and feeling nervous under Bill's intent stare. He wasn't even sure if this would work. What if Bill said no? What if he insisted on making a deal? What if—

" _Fine_."

Dipper blinked, unsure if he'd just heard correctly. He looked down at Bill, who was looking very exasperated and disgruntled on the couch.

"What?" Dipper asked.

Bill rolled his eye and gave a sigh. "I said fine. Shaking hands is half the fun, of course, but I suppose this will do. I'll take your...promise."

Dipper felt his stomach flutter with relief. Relief, and something else he didn't quite recognize, like excitement but a bit different. Bill had said yes. They didn't have to take any drastic measures to keep him in check or send him off to some sort prison. Bill could stay at the Shack. Dipper let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"Now," Bill said, bringing Dipper back to the present. "If you could just, free me, Pine Tree, we can get on with this dimensional research nonsense."

Dipper let out a small laugh. "What? I'm not letting you go."

Bill blinked up at him. "Excuse me."

"Well," Dipper added with a shrug. "Not for the night at least." He gave another small laugh. "I mean, seriously. You just attacked me with a water glass and a bread knife, so I think I'll have a little more piece of mind knowing you're tied up at the moment."

If Dipper didn't know any better, he would have sworn Bill's eye had just flashed red.

"So, what?" Bill seethed through gritted teeth. "You're just going to leave me down here? No bed? Isn't that what humans usually sleep on?"

Dipper shrugged. "I'm not here to treat you to a five-star stay, Bill. And all our other beds are taken—well, except for Stan's, but there's no way I'd let you go near his room."

"Pine Tree," Bill growled. "This isn't fair."

"Welcome to being a human," Dipper said, reaching over Bill to pick up Sophia and wrap her around his neck. Dipper turned to leave.

"Pine Tree," Bill called. "Don't you dare leave me down here like this."

A small smile flitted to Dipper's lips. "Night, Bill. Sweet dreams," Dipper said, hitting the lights to the living room. A sense of satisfaction filled his chest at watching as Bill was doused in darkness, completely helpless and for once, not manipulating him or Mabel.

Still, Dipper paused on his way to his room, a nagging notion was pulling at him. Even though he and Bill hadn't shook hands, or made a deal, it felt like something finite had happened between them. A nervous worry worked its way into Dipper's brain. He might not have made a deal, but Dipper had done something very dangerous, agreeing to help Bill, to keep an eye on him and take responsibility for him. To spend the next number of weeks with him. Not to mention, the promise Dipper had made to release Bill from his body, a feat Dipper had absolutely no idea how to accomplish. Dipper stood in the dark hallway, his heart beats laced with anxiety. He couldn't help but feel like he'd just tied the knot to his own noose.

A clicking noise by his ear brought Dipper back to the real world and he glanced at the green lizard waiting patiently on his shoulder. Dipper let out a sigh, reaching up to stroke Sophia on her scaly head as he opened the door to his room.

"I know, I know," he muttered, half to her, half to himself. "I'm doing it again, aren't I? I'm over thinking things."

Sophia let out another clicking sound as Dipper unwrapped her from his shoulders and settled her into her tank.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," he said, sitting down on his own bed. "After all, how bad can having a demon for a roommate be?"

 

_"I wanna be an airborne ranger!_

_Give me a life of blood and danger!_

_Come on, Pine Tree, let's make a wager!"_

Three hours later, and Dipper stared at his ceiling with bloodshot eyes, listening as Bill gave his glorious rendition of Airborne Ranger from the couch in the living room, his voice carrying throughout the entire Shack. He'd never once let up since Dipper had gone to bed, doing everything from just plain screaming to reciting the entire Bee Movie script at the top of his lungs. How he even knew about that movie, Dipper couldn't even guess.

There was a brief moment of silence, a brief moment in which sparked a foolish flicker of hope in Dipper.

_"It's a small world after alllllllll!"_

"Dipper!" Mabel's voice rang throughout the Shack. "Shut him up!"

Dipper groaned and rolled over pulling his pillow over his head as he stared at the wall, knowing full well he was nowhere near sleep as Bill continued to sing.

_"It's a world of slaughter, a world of tears_

_It's a world of terrors and a world of fears!"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I know it's short especially since you guys have waited so long but I promise the next one's coming soon!


	5. Acting on Your Best Behavior

Shadows lingered at the edge of his vision, clawing at his consciousness. Voices, harsh, cold, and somewhat familiar echoed in his ears. He tried to listen to them, to find out what they were saying, but they were too distorted, too distant. The shadows converged, thickening until they looked like figures coming towards him, about to swallow him whole.

A blaring ringing shot straight through the silence and into his head.

Dipper's eyes shot open. The first thing he saw was a brilliant gold eye shining through the dark at him. Dipper screamed. Bill screamed. Dipper shot straight up on instinct, his head colliding with Bill's. Dipper let out a yelp of pain and reared backwards, falling out of bed in a mess of blankets and landing with a hard thud on the floor.

For a few seconds, nothing moved. Dipper groaned, his head throbbing and his recently healed ribs protesting at the upset. It'd taken over a month, a _month_ , for his ribs to heal, and now he was going to die anyways simply because a demon was going to give him a heart attack.

"Geez, kid," Bill griped. "I didn't realize you had such a hard _head_."

"Why?" Dipper said, rubbing his hands over his face. "Why me?"

Dipper reached up to his bed stand from the floor and fumbled blindly in the dark for his phone and the original ringing that woke him.

"Mystery Twins," Dipper answered, still laying on the floor. "Gravity Falls's experts for all your supernatural occurrences and all around weirdness. Specializing in demonic possessions and hauntings."

There were a few moments of silence as Dipper listened to the other voice on the phone. "Haunting? Exorcism, yeah, okay," he said, voice still groggy with sleep. "We'll be over in a few."

Dipper hung up and tossed his phone to the side. "Bill," he groaned. "What are you doing in my room?"

"We get a job, Pine Tree?"

Dipper looked up, scowling. Bill crouched at the edge of his bed, one eager, golden eye glinting down at him and a large red mark across his forehead.

Bill had cleaned up quite a bit since Dipper had first seen him in the basement nearly a month ago. His golden hair had been cut and washed, now neatly ruffled with a look that said he wasn't trying _too_ hard. Though at first he was adverse to the idea of eating "disgusting human food" and nearly retched after watching Mabel scarf down twelve cookies in one setting, Bill eventually broke down and began eating. With proper meals, he'd filled out, loosing the skeletal look as well as all the hollowness from his face. He'd also gained most of his color back now that he was no longer locked inside a lightless basement, his skin warming to its original honey-brown tone.

Dipper had trashed Bill's ragged clothes on the first morning after releasing him from the basement, but after a week of watching the demon parade around in horribly mismatched Hawaiian shirts and 1980's neon short-shorts dug up from the back of Mabel's closet, Dipper had begrudgingly decided to take the Bill shopping. The result was that Bill now possessed a modest wardrobe consisting of black pants, an assortment of wildly printed collared shirts, three bowties, and one pair of discount black silk gloves that Dipper only got because Bill had thrown a tantrum in the middle of the store. Bill wore the gloves nearly constantly now, sweeping their silken palms over everything he could get his hands on. (After all, touching things was such a _human_ thing to do.)

"No," Dipper said, pushing Bill's face away so he could untangle himself from his sheets and stand up. " _I_ got a job, a job which _you_ are not allowed to go on, just like how you're not allowed in my room. So I'll ask again, what are you _doing_ in here, Bill?"

Bill leaned back on the bed his eye wandering around the room. He seemed to be looking everywhere but Dipper. "Well, it's not to watch you sleep, that's for sure."

Dipper stared at Bill. He suddenly felt as his face flushed hot, and he was suddenly very aware of the fact that he was wearing his usual sleep attire, which consisted nothing but his boxer-briefs.

Dipper snatched a pillow from the floor and flung it at Bill. "What the _hell_!"

"What?" Bill said, catching the pillow before it hit him in the face. "I can't get into the mindscape anymore, kid."

"And watching other people sleep helps you with that, _how_?"

Bill shrugged. "I can't get into dreams anymore, and for whatever reason, I can't dream, myself. This is the closest I can get."

"So you break into _my room_?" Dipper asked, incredulous. Dipper had to admit that the idea that Bill couldn't dream caught his attention, but that was a discussion for another day. "And _then_ you insist on coming on jobs with me?"

"What am I supposed to do, Pine Tree? You won't let me in your room to see your research—"

"That's because last time you were in my room you tried to _burn_ my research!" Dipper shouted, waving a hand at the still scorched notes littering his desk.

"I wasn't being serious," Bill rolled his eyes. "Jeez, you and your sister need to learn to take a joke."

Dipper pressed his fingers into his eyes. "Your idea of a joke was telling Mabel Waddles would make a better pan of bacon than a pet."

"Yes," Bill said off-handedly, "well I do think spending the next three hours locked outside in the rain was enough to pay for _that_ harmless comment."

Anger surged in Dipper's gut and he was two seconds away from screaming out loud. He could've sworn the demon hadn't been this infuriating ten years ago. "You know the ground rules, Bill," he said through gritted teeth. "You are not allowed to come on hunts, you are not allowed in my room, you are not allowed near _any_ supernatural stuff!"

"I am _trying_ to help!"

Dipper gave a snort of disbelief. "Since when were you interested in helping other people?"

"Since you!" Bill yelled back, leaping to his feet off the bed. "You and I both know you won't research how to get me out of this body until you fix this town. I'm simply trying to speed the process along."

Dipper stared at Bill in disbelief. "So you're only doing it to benefit yourself?"

Bill looked disgusted. "Why else would I?"

Dipper let out a frustrated groan and ran his hands down his face. "It's not happening," he said, shaking his head. "I don't know what you'll do during an exorcism. You're too unpredictable, there's no way in hell."

"Pine Tree!"

"No, Bill," Dipper said, seizing the demon by the upper arm.

Though they both knew Bill had more than enough strength in his super-human body to resist, he allowed Dipper to drag him to the door anyways.

"First rule, you're not allowed in my room!" Dipper said, flinging the door open and shoving Bill through it.

"I thought the first rule was not to kill anyone?" Bill said.

Dipper slammed the door shut on Bill before turning to storm towards his dresser and shuffle through his drawers for some wearable clothing.

"But Pine Tree," Bill whined from the other side of the door. "How am I supposed to help you if I can't even see what you're working on?"

"You're not coming," Dipper shouted back. "And that's final!"

* * *

 

Bill squatted next to Dipper in the bushes, bouncing up and down, a manic grin on his face. A large mansion towered over them, its dark windows looking down at them like empty eye-sockets. The shadows of trees clawed across the face of the house, as if they were trying to tear it down, brick by brick. The Northwest Mansion had changed hands once or twice since the Northwests had lost all their wealth. Old Man McGucket had owned it for some time after Weirdmageddon. It wasn't until three or four years ago that whatever mental stability McGucket had managed to gain back started to deteriorate and his son was forced to remove his own father from the mansion. Ever since, the place had been boarded up, abandoned by the McGucket family.

It had been Sheriff Blubs that had made the call for an exorcism after hearing evidence of human tampering from inside the mansion. It couldn't be a simple break in; everyone in town knew the Stan twins had sent back a whole slew of monsters and anomalies from their adventures on the seas to McGucket for safe keeping. Most of the anomalies had been left behind after McGucket left the mansion, being the main reason no one set foot in the old place anymore. Everyone was smart enough to stay away from whatever monsters lurked inside the manor. This, along with the mansion's previous supernatural history, meant the only liable explanation left was a haunting.

Blubs and his husband were currently on standby in their police cruiser down the street, waiting for Dipper's all clear. Meaning, Dipper thankfully didn't have to worry too much about any civilians getting in the way of whatever disaster was sure to happen whenever Bill was around.

 

Dipper had tried. He could at least say that. He'd tried.

For the first week or so, Dipper had willingly—though cautiously—brought Bill along on any supernatural jobs he could. Mabel still refused to have anything to do with the demon, so that meant it was usually just Dipper and Bill working together. Well, "working" and "together" are rather loosely used terms.

Dipper had hoped that bringing Bill along on jobs would allow Bill to see exactly what was going on in Gravity Falls, and in turn, allow him to help Dipper figure out where all this weird stuff was coming from and how to stop it. What Dipper should've realized was that none of his plans ever went well. Ever.

Their first few jobs had ended in Bill nearly killing one of their clients (and _not_ by accident), setting the town hall on fire, befriending a harpy and then letting it loose in the local mall, and breaking into Gravity Fall's local psychiatric ward, Morningside Hospital, to harass the patients.

That, in addition to Bill's most recent incident of nearly burning all of Dipper's research, had been the last straw. Dipper had officially banned Bill from all things supernatural.

Bill continued to insist that he only wanted to help. That he only wanted to fix Dipper's problem so Dipper could finally fix _his_ problem, but with every turn, Dipper couldn't help but get the feeling Bill was intentionally trying to sabotage him. He'd mauled this possibility over in his head multiple times, only to come to the conclusion that it didn't make any sense. Then again, when did Bill ever do things that made sense? But no matter which way Dipper looked at it, Bill had nothing to gain from ruining Dipper's work. Dipper was the only chance Bill had at getting out of his fleshy prison, so why prolong his research?

In the end, Dipper simply decided that Bill was naturally a concoction for disaster, bringing mayhem with him wherever he went, which is exactly the reason Bill had spent the last few weeks restricted from leaving the Shack, leaving him to harass the twins' houseplants, rip up their collection of reading books, and start philosophical discussions with Sophia which often ended in Bill shouting at the iguana while Sophia simply sat there, looking highly uninterested.

That is, until tonight. The only reason Bill was even here with him right now was because the demon had promised to be on his best behavior.

 

"Ready, Pine Tree?" Bill asked.

Dipper shot a side glance at Bill, whose wide smile looked absolutely terrifying as it glowed in the dark, his single gold eye flashing in the light of Dipper's flashlight.

Though he'd never say it out loud, Dipper had to admit he hadn't expected Ford to give Bill such an attractive body. Bill was only slightly taller than Dipper—which was pretty tall to begin with—with lean muscle and a very pretty face with high cheek-bones and a strong jaw. The fact that Bill had a tendency to steal Mabel's make-up on a regular basis didn't make things any easier. Apparently, demons were beauty gurus as well as supernatural assholes. Dipper had even given Bill one of Stan's old silk eyepatches to cover his scarred eye, making it easy to forget how garish it was. But pretty face or no, Bill still had that smile that sent crawling shudders down Dipper's spine.

"Yeah," Dipper muttered, reaching around to dig through his backpack. "Just give me a sec." Among the vials of holy water, silver mirrors, notebooks, and extra flashlights, Dipper managed to pull out a small, grey metal box with a gauge on the front and at least five different antennae sprouting from its top. The gauge was dead now, probably because they were still so far away from the house, but it was sure to act up once they got inside.

The ecto-detector, as Dipper liked to call it, was a device that he'd managed to invent with the help of a friend from Massachusetts that could see and talk to ghosts—well, ghosts, zombies, vengeful lightning spirits, all of the above, really. In other words, it was their best bet at finding their spirit in the house.

"Alright," Dipper said. Like he'd expected, Dipper's hat had been returned to him not long after the ogre incident. He looked back up at the manor and pulled the bill firmly over his forehead. "Let's go."

 

The Northwest Manor was nothing like Dipper remembered. Granted, Dipper had only been _inside_ the manor only a handful of times, but still, it was creepy just how much it'd changed. Once polished floorboards creaked and splintered under their shoes. The wallpaper hung in strips, deep claw marks gauged into the paneling beneath. The mansion hadn't had running water or electricity in nearly five years, leaving shadows to hang like shrouds over everything. A horrible rotting stench filled the air and Dipper had to pull the neck of his hoodie up over his nose to keep from gagging.

Dipper lead Bill through the mansion, the two of them tip-toeing down abandoned corridors and peeking into destroyed rooms, their flashlights bouncing over fallen chandeliers and ruined white carpets. Pacifica's mother would have an aneurysm if she saw that, Dipper thought offhandedly as they continued on. He kept one eye trained on his ecto-detector and the other on the path in front of them as they tip-toed down hallways with sagging roofs and torn tapestries. So far the device hadn't even made a blip, and he hadn't found any signs of paranormal activity.

The manor groaned and there came a creaking from downstairs. Dipper's heart leapt into his throat and he looked behind him to find Bill leaning over the broken railing to look down the staircase, a manic smile on his face and his eyes glinting with an intense interest that was enough to concern Dipper. He ended up having to pull Bill away from the staircase before he could get any terrible ideas. Dipper had only a vague idea of what kind of creatures lurked within the bowels of the Northwest mansion, but whatever they were, he was sure he wasn't ready to face them quite yet. They needed to find this spirit, exorcise it, and _get out_.

They pressed further into the house, and they'd nearly finished their sweep of the second floor when Dipper heard a distinct muttering sound, like someone was muttering under their breath. Dipper's heart picked up pace. That was definitely _not_ a monster sound. He glanced down at his detector, only to find it as dead as when they were outside. He shook it. Still dead.

Dipper spun to face Bill, his flashlight making Bill's eye shine in the dark.

"You hear that?"

Bill didn't answer. His gaze was distant, his brows creased in concentration, his head cocked to hear the sound better. The muttering grew louder and Dipper looked back at the detector, the read-out needle still at zero. He shook it again. Still nothing.

"Damn it, Norman," Dipper hissed, reaching around to shove the defective device back into his bag. "I thought he'd fixed it." Dipper nodded to Bill. "Come on," he whispered. "I think it's coming from this way."

Bill shook his head. "No it's coming the other way," he said, looking down the hallway.

Dipper looked over his shoulder to peer through the darkness. He could've sworn the muttering from the office doors down the hall. When he turned back, Bill was gone, already running down the hallway in the other direction.

"Bill!" Dipper hissed.

An unnatural shriek came from down the hall and Dipper spun around. Yep, it'd definitely come from behind the office doors. The spirit was getting restless, if it grew stronger, it'd be more difficult to exorcise. Dipper cast another glance down the hallway Bill had disappeared down, only to see nothing but shadows and darkness. He hated to split up in a place like this, but he _needed_ to get to and capture the spirit before he lost it.

"Shit," Dipper muttered before turning back around and running for the double doors of the office.

 

The large oak doors swung open on rusty hinges, revealing a large office with floor to ceiling windows that let moonlight spill in, illuminating everything with an eerie glow. Dusty bookshelves lined the walls, some of the books flung across the floor barring obvious teeth and claw marks. What was left of a chaise lounge set half stood half lay on broken legs to the side of the room, it's stuffing strewn everywhere. A large oak desk stood in the middle of the office, with one of those large, cushy rolling chairs that was bent too far back to be of any use anymore.

As soon as he opened the doors, Dipper could hear the muttering more clearly, along with a scratching noise coming from behind the desk and the sound of desk drawers being opened and closed. Dipper trained his flashlight on the desk and he could see movement behind it. Dipper pulled a small silver hand mirror from his hoodie pocket with his other hand and faced it towards the desk.

"Whatever spirit resides here," he announced. "Reveal yourself."

The noises stopped. There was a flash of movement above the desk before it disappeared and the noises started up again. Dipper narrowed his eyes, his arms lowering slightly. He could have sworn—

The pair of eyes appeared above the desk again, this time lingering before vanishing once more. Dipper's heart nearly stopped, his arms falling to his sides as he took another step forward.

"Fiddleford?" he asked.

The eyes peered over the desk again, and this time, there could be no mistake. Dipper _knew_ those eyes. They disappeared again and Dipper crept forward peering around the desk to see Old Man McGucket shuffling through a mess of papers pulled from the desk drawers.

"What have they done with my research," he muttered. "Where've they put it? I had to come back for my research. Where is it? Where is it?"

Dipper crouched down in front of McGucket, peering under the old man's brow to find his eyes wide and manic. He was still wearing the hospital gown from Morningside Hospital, Dipper recognized it. A lot of people had ended up in Morningside after Weirdmageddon, so it was easy to spot.

McGucket's hand suddenly shot forward, seizing hold of Dipper's wrist. Dipper reared back, his heart leaping into his throat, but McGucket's grip was crushing, despite his age. The old man looked up at Dipper with wide, terrified eyes that couldn't seem to focus on anything.

"Something big is coming, something big, something big," McGucket told Dipper. At least, Dipper thought he was talking to him, it was hard to tell since the old man seemed to be looking right through him. "When gravity falls and earth becomes sky. When the end approaches and blue flames fly, fear the beast with just one eye."

Dipper felt as something was shoved into his hand. He looked down to see crumpled sheets of paper, folded into a haphazard square, haphazard writing scrawled across them. A certain sadness crossed Dipper's heart. He hadn't realized how bad McGucket's condition was.

"Fiddleford," Dipper said with a gentle voice, looking back up. "Weirdmageddon's over, all of this already happened."

McGucket let go of Dipper's wrist and instead grasped his shoulders. His eyes focused for the first time and looked straight at Dipper. Dipper felt his heart leap into his throat. He'd never once in his life felt threatened by McGucket, but the way the old man was looking at him now filled him with terror.

"Two prophecies since time began, one for the devil and one for man," McGucket said, his grip on Dipper's shoulders tightening to the point of being painful. "When the sun goes out and Mother calls time for bed, beware the demon inside your head. The world will burn the skies will fall, for he will make the final call."

"Pine Tree?"

Dipper nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of Bill's voice. McGucket's words rang in his ears and he felt lightheaded and dizzy. He blinked a few times, trying to clear his head.

"Bill?" he called back.

Bill never answered. He appeared in the doorway of the office and Dipper saw as Bill's eye flicked to land on him and then McGucket. Whatever Bill was going to say died in his throat, his face falling.

"Who's that, Pine Tree?" Bill asked, his eye never once leaving McGucket.

"Beware the beast!" McGucket repeated. His eyes flicked to Bill, wide with horror. "The beast with just one eye. Fear the beast! The beast!"

"McGucket," Dipper said, carefully pulling Fiddleford's hands from his shoulders and standing up. "It's okay, I'm going to get someone that can help you."

He walked over to Bill, who was still starring intently at McGucket. "He's an escaped patient from Morningside," Dipper explained in a low voice. "Just, keep an eye on him until I can get Blubs and Durland here, okay?"

"Yeah," Bill said, his voice distant, like his thoughts were elsewhere. "I can keep an eye on him."

"Hey," Dipper said, hitting his shoulder. Bill finally turned away from McGucket to look at him, his gold eye still distant. "I mean it," Dipper warned. "Don't try to pull anything, alright? Just, stay here. And don't. Touch. Anything."

A smirk slipped onto Bill's face. "What, don't trust me, Pine Tree?"

"Not particularly, no."

Bill's eye flicked downwards. "Whatcha got there, Pine Tree?"

Dipper looked down to find the notes Fiddleford had given him still in his hand. "Oh," he said, shrugging off the question. "Nothing, just something McGucket gave me. Gibberish, probably." Dipper slipped the notes into his back pocket, not giving them a second thought.

Dipper didn't notice Bill's eye following his every movement and the way it lingered on the notes in Dipper's back pocket. When he looked back up, Bill's eye snapped up, a large baring grin slapped to his face.

"Well, better get going, Pine Tree," Bill purred. "Don't worry, I've got everything under control here."

Dipper gave one last glance back at McGucket before turning to leave the two of them. He could still hear calls of "The beast, the beast! Fear the beast!" echoing after him down the hall.

* * *

Twenty minutes.

_Twenty._

_Minutes._

Dipper couldn't have been gone for any longer than twenty minutes to retrieve Blubs and Durland and lead them up through the manor. But apparently that's all it took in order for him to come back to a goddamned catastrophe.

Dipper knew he'd made a mistake as soon as he reached the floor he'd left Bill and McGucket on. Screaming and yelling ricocheted down the hall. Dipper's first instinct was to run, leaving Blubs and Durland behind at the staircase. He bolted down the hallway, skidding around the corner, the scene inside the office opening up to him.

McGucket was on the floor, still screaming about the beast, as he tried to hold off an enraged, six foot, two demon. Bill stood over McGucket, a lethal-looking letter opener flashing in his hand as he tried to shove the weapon towards the old man's heart, with McGucket just managing to keep him back.

"Bill!" Dipper was across the room in seconds, seizing hold of Bill's wrist and trying to rip the letter opener from his grip, but he wasn't strong enough. Bill yelled and tried to force the blade down.

"The beast! Fear the beast!" McGucket shrieked.

"Would you shut up about the beast!" Bill screamed.

Bill lunged forward, forcing Dipper to wrap his hand around the blade of the letter opener in order to hold it back. It sliced across his palm, blood flooding down his wrist, but he refused to let go.

In the next moment, Blubs and Durland showed up, racing into the office. It took all three of them to wrestle Bill off of McGucket, the demon hissing and spitting the entire time. Dipper managed to hold him back as the officers ushered McGucket out of the room.

"The _fuck_ , Bill!" Dipper shouted, shoving him against the desk.

"Pine Tree, you can't just let him leave!" Bill shouted back, gesturing towards the door. "You have no idea what he knows!"

"So you try to kill him! You said you wouldn't pull any of this shit! You promised—"

"You don't get it, Pine Tree!" Bill screamed. "He'll be the end of us!"

"The end of you, maybe! The first rule, the _first rule_ , Bill! Was not to kill anyone!"

Bill seized the front of Dipper's hoodie. "You have no idea what horrors that man could cause, knowing what he knows," he hissed, his burning gold eye only inches from Dipper's face.

"No," Dipper growled. "But I've just seen what _you_ could."

Dipper grabbed Bill's hands and yanked them off him before shoving past the demon. "I'm done with you Bill. I don't care anymore. Do whatever you want." Dipper stormed out of the office and he could hear as Bill let out one last frustrated scream before slamming his fists against the oak desk. The sound of splintering wood could be heard all the way down the hallway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying to keep up with this story, but writing is so haaaaaaaaaaard. ;-;


	6. Even While We Sleep

Cool night air slipped under the brim of Dipper's hat as he walked down the street, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his hoodie and his sneakers landing a bit harder than was necessary on the asphalt. He couldn't  _believe_  Bill. Well, actually, he could. He could believe all of it. Trying to kill McGucket, turning his back on Dipper and wrecking havoc as soon as he was given a moment's freedom, then screaming cryptic warnings that didn't even make any sense. That sounded  _exactly_  like Bill. 

No, what Dipper couldn't believe is how much of an idiot he'd been.

Dipper reached his truck that he'd parked down the street from the manor and paused. He looked at his reflection of the dark driver's side window, his own furious expression looking back at him. He grit his teeth and leaned forward, hitting his head against the glass of the window. Once. Twice. His hat fell to land on the asphalt and he rested his forehead against the cool glass, his eyes screwed shut.

How? How?  _How_  could he have been so naïve as to trust that Bill could be anything other than a walking disaster. How could he have been so stupid as to think for even a second that he could've kept Bill in check. That he could have made him into anything other than the manipulative, murderous demon that he was?

Dipper knocked his head against the truck window one more time. He let out a sigh and began shuffling through his pockets, looking for his keys. After checking his hoodie pockets, he shoved his hand into his back pocket, only to find something else. A tad surprised, Dipper pulled the notes McGucket had given him. Dipper blinked down at them. With everything that had happened with Bill, he'd completely forgotten that he'd even had them.

Dipper thought back to the mansion, to the scene of McGucket hunched and muttering in that massive office, his eyes wide with fear. Whatever these notes were, Dipper thought, they must've been important enough for McGucket to break out of Morningside and find his way all the way back to his old home to get them. Overcome with curiosity, Dipper carefully unfolded the wrinkled and worn notes.

Dipper began flipping through the notes, most of them covered in slanted writing, strange symbols, and sketches. For the most part, they looked similar to the pages in Ford's journals, though the writing was obviously more hurried. Most of them had sketches: one of a square with a bowler hat, another with a circle with a strange eye, a third with a familiar looking triangle similar to the one inked on Dipper's arm, and the last with a large star that looked like the ones children drew with five criss-crossing lines. He shuffled faster and faster through the pages, all the pictures seeming to stare right at him with those large, unseeing eyes, a nervous feeling slowly filling his gut as he looked at each drawing, becoming lost in the endless sea of scribbles and lines.

He could feel a tingling start in his fingers and travel all the way up his arms, as if they'd fallen asleep from sleeping on them the wrong way. He was unable to wretch his eyes away from the notes, like they were somehow forcing him to look at them. He could feel the vibrating numbness travel up his neck and into his head, a deafening humming sound filling his ears before everything went black. The last thing he saw were McGucket's notes and those wide, unblinking eyes staring up at him.

 

He was in a strange white hallway. Wait, no. Not strange. He'd been here before. In another dream...

Doors lined either side of the hallway and the small tables and plants that lined the walls gave it a distinct "office" feel. Dipper looked around, an eerie feeling trickling down his back. Everything was just as colorless as before, with only varying shades of white to distinguish anything. It was like all the color had been zapped from the scenery. Even the shadows were simply a darker white.

Dipper spun around, only to find the same hallway stretching on for an eternity behind him. Where was he? He didn't know this place, not in the sense that he'd been here in real life before. But something about it felt familiar, like a name he'd learned and could almost remember but it was just on the tip of his tongue.

"Have you done it yet?"

Dipper's heart leapt into his throat. He spun back around to face the other end of the endless hallway. He knew that voice. It was the same voice he'd heard during the first dream.

"I'm working on it. I only do bets, remember? They're a bit more refined, a bit more cultured. They tend to need a bit more time."

A shiver raced down Dipper's spine. Whatever these voices were talking about, it couldn't be good. They spoke with a sense of cold clarity, and a sort of confidence that only came from growing accustomed to having an immense amount of power. They talked in hushed tones, but Dipper could still make them out clearly.

"Fine, then make him take a bet," the first voice said. "Either way, that gate must be opened. Force it if you must."

 _Gate?_  Dipper thought.  _What gate?_

"Come on," came second voice. "Have a little faith, you ya'? Don't worry, I'll get it done."

Dipper squinted down the hall. He couldn't tell exactly where the voices were coming from. Everything seemed distant, space distorted without any color. Dipper swallowed the rising lump in his throat and took a few cautious steps forward, making his way down the hall and towards the source of the voices.

He didn't know who these voices were or what they were talking about, but the sickening, rolling tilt in his stomach told him it couldn't be good. Dipper took another step forward, his heart racing in his throat as he approached the door he thought he could hear the voices from. He reached out a hand, ready to push it open.

_Who ya' gonna call?_

_Ghostbusters!_

 

Dipper jolted awake, his heart racing in his chest, his hand still outstretched to open that door.

Panic lingered in Dipper's conscious as he spun around, wide eyes taking in his surroundings. Sheets wrapped around his legs, a wall papered in noted and news clippings looked down on him, and his cap hung peacefully on the post of his bed. The ringtone on his phone continued to play the Ghostbuster's theme song from his nightstand. He was home, in bed.

* * *

 

Dipper shuffled into the living room, rubbing at his eyes. Late afternoon sunlight filtered in through the window, giving everything a warm glow. Mabel lay on the floor, a large square of foam laid out in front of her to take up most of the floor, no doubt part of her next big cosplay project. The foam shapes had already been outlined in pen and she was already a good way through carving out most of them with her utility knife, with bits and pieces of foam strewn everywhere. Waddles sat on stand-by, holding a pair of scissors in his mouth for easy-access as Sophia lounged wrapped around his neck.

Dipper did his best to stifle a yawn. "What ha-ha-haaaaaaaa-ppend last night?"

Mabel spun around, looking up at him. A large smile broke out across her face. "Dipper! You're okay!"

Dipper's brow creased. "Um, yeah, I am, but—ack!"

He was cut off as Mabel launched herself off the ground, her arms wrapping tight around Dipper's neck, nearly crushing his windpipe.

"You're okay, you're okay, you're okay!" she squealed.

Dipper felt himself being smothered under a mess of brown and newly dyed blue hair.

"Mabel," he choked. "Can't. _Breath_."

"Oh, my gosh, Dipper," Mabel said, pulling away from him and patting his face incessantly as if to make sure he was really there. She was talking about a mile a minute. "When Bill brought you home this morning, I thought you were dead, or dying. And then he said you'd just passed out and needed some sleep, but I was so worried you weren't going to wake up and I—"

"Wait, wait, wait," Dipper said, pulling his sister's hands away from his face. "Calm down. What are you talking about?"

Mabel took a deep breath to calm herself down, her cheeks puffing out in that cartoonish way of hers before she let it go. "Okay," she said, this time speaking at a speed slow enough to be heard by human ears. "Apparently, you got a call from Blubs and Durland last night about a haunting in at the old Northwest Manor."

"Yeah," Dipper said slowly, nodding. "I remember that."

"Alright, well do you remember passing out next to your car later that night?" Mabel asked with a huff as she fell onto the couch.

Dipper starred at his sister. He blinked and shook his head, like there was a memory he couldn't quite bring to the surface. Something about...pictures? Or a set of notes?

"Or that Bill had to drag you unconscious ass home?" Mabel asked, breaking his train of thought. "Do you remember any of that?"

"Mabel," Dipper sighed. "How could I possibly remember that if I was—wait," Dipper stopped mid-sentence as he realized what his sister had just said. " _Bill_ brought me home?"

Mabel scrunched her nose at him. "Yeah, of course, goober. Who else would have? I didn't know where you were."

"Wha—?" Dipper was at a loss for words. "But I told him to _leave_! I said I didn't want anything to do with him anymore!"

Mabel blinked. She stared at him, eyes wide as an owl's. "You what."

Dipper began pacing, running his fingers through his hair. "I don't understand. Why would he bring me _back_?"

"Augh, _God_ , Dipper," Mabel groaned, slapping herself in the face with both hands and falling backwards on the couch. "You mean we could've been _rid_ of him? Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"Well, sorry, Mabel, I guess being unconscious sort of got in the way of—wait," Dipper froze in the middle of his pacing and turned towards his sister. "You mean he's still here? Where?"

Mabel dragged her hands down her face, pulling at her skin so it looked like a clown-face. "Outside," she groaned. "He was trying to shove Waddles in the oven again, so I exiled him for the day. Augh, Dipper, we could have been _rid_ of him. He could've been _gone_. Why did he come back?"

"I have no idea," Dipper said as he side-stepped the couch to look out the window to the lawn. He could just see Bill, messing about with something at the edge of the woods. It looked like he was dragging large branches out of the woods and onto the lawn. "What's he doing out there, anyways?"

"I don't know," Mabel said. "Knowing him, probably some sort of demonic ritual or something—"

_Beep-boop. Beep-boop. Hey, Mabel! Guess what? It's Mabel! How cool is that? I mean I can hear my own—_

Mabel glanced down at her phone—which she had recorded her own voice on specifically to use for her alarm sounds—and let out a gasp.

"What?" Dipper asked, turning around. "What is it?"

"I forgot what time it was!" Mabel said, leaping to her feet. "Grenda's coming back in town today from her wrestling tour and Candy and I were going to meet her and have dinner! Candy's going to be here any minute!"

"Wait, you were going to go on a dinner date while I was stuck in some sort of supernatural comma?" Dipper asked, watching as Mabel ran out of the living room.

"Sorry, Dips!" Mabel called back. "I forgot! Anyways, you're fine now, so no big deal, right?"

There came a flurry of steps down the stairs and Mabel flew into the living room, this time wearing only her bra and a pair of _really_ short pajama shorts, a toothbrush in her mouth. Waddles was hot on her heel, squealing excitedly in all the commotion, his little pig hooves scrambling on the wood floors to keep up.

"Gah, Mabel!" Dipper said, quickly shutting his eyes and turning his head from his half-naked sister. They were twins, sure, but that didn't make it any less weird.

"Oh mah gosh," Mabel said around her toothbrush. "I'm sho late!"

The two twins both nearly jumped out of their skin as a knock came from the door. Mabel let out a squeak and darted into the kitchen.

"Mabel!" Dipper yelled after her. "Don't spit your toothpaste in the kitchen—!"

There came a grotesque spitting noise from the kitchen.

"Sink."

Mabel skidded into the living room in the next moment before darting for the front door. Waddles ran happily after her.

"Mabel!" Dipper called, chasing after his sister. "You can't answer the door like that!"

"Sure I can!" Mabel called back, skidding to a stop in the entryway. "Candy and I have sleepovers all the time!"

They both scrambled for the door, Waddles squealing and running about their feet, nearly tripping them both.

"But what if it's not Candy?!" Dipper said.

"Who else could it _possibly_ be, bro-bro?"

Mabel made it to the door first, with Dipper nearly jumping on top of her to get to the handle.

"Mabel!"

"I mean, it's not like we're expecting a visit from anyone. Who's gonna come see us?"

Mabel swung the door open, still in nothing but her underwear, standing on one foot as Waddles had managed to wriggle his way under the both of them and Dipper all but climbing over Mabel's back to keep her from answering the door. The door opened, revealing who was on the other side.

All three of them froze. It wasn't Candy.

The woman that stood on the Mystery Shack's front porch was nothing short of drop-dead gorgeous. Her slick, blonde hair was pulled back into a very professional-looking bun and she towered over the two crouched twins in her stiletto heals. Everything about her matched, from her three-piece lavender woman's suit to her periwinkle eye-shadow. She was the kind of person that you just knew from first glance had her life together. The kind of person that made you embarrassed to open the door with messy hair, much less without any clothes on. She starred down at them, her dark blue eyes wide and her face flushed with embarrassment.

"Oh, um," Pacifica Northwest stumbled over her words, flustered on the Pines Twins' front porch. "Is now a bad time—?"

"No!" Mabel all but shrieked. "Hello! House, Pacifica, coffee, in, come. How you are?" As soon as the words left her mouth, she let out a squeak and slapped her hands over her face. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry."

Dipper couldn't see it, but he was positive his sister's face must've been _burning_.

Both Dipper and Mabel looked up in surprise at the sound of laughter.

Pacifica was _laughing_. But not in the haughty, arrogant way of laughing she had when the twins had first met her, like they were some disgusting joke in her opinion. No, this was a real, honest-to-God, crinkle-eyed, hand-covering-mouth, flushed-in-the-face, giggling laugh.

"Oh my God," she said, smiling down at the both of them. "You two haven't changed at all."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol I have no idea what I'm doing ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	7. Everybody's Looking for Something

Dipper brought two cups of coffee to the kitchen table, settling one in front of Pacifica (Just some milk, thank you.) and the other in front of Mabel (Twelve scoops of sugar and don't forget that milk, bro-bro!).

"So you're moving back to Gravity Falls?" Mabel asked, her knees pulled up in her kitchen chair. Thankfully, she'd run and pulled a shirt on, with long sleeves and a chorus of singing cupcakes printed on the front—not her usual sweater attire, but still, it was better than nothing.

"Yeah," Dipper added, settling down in the third kitchen chair with his own cup. "We weren't sure we'd ever see you again after you family moved after Weirdmageddon."

"Ah, yes," Pacifica said, wrapping her manicured hands around her mug. "Well my mother and father are still in Washington actually. I don't really talk to them much anymore."

"Well, what are you doing back here then?" Mabel asked. "We haven't seen you in, like, _five_ -ever."

"More specifically," Dipper added, "what are you doing _here_? I thought you hated the Shack. And us," he added under his breath.

Mabel kicked him under the table and Dipper had to suppress a yelp.

"Oh well, I'm not sure if you've heard yet or not," Pacifica said as she began to rummage through her bag. "But I managed to start my own real estate firm." She pulled out a business card with loopy, purple lettering and placed it on the table in front of the twins.

Mabel let out a gasp and snatched up the card before Dipper could even get a good look at it.

"Western-max Realty?" she asked in a rush. "That's _your's_? But they've been all over the news!"

A small smile made its way onto Pacifica's face. "Yes, we have managed to grow rather rapidly over the last few years."

"So what?" Dipper asked. "You're here to try and buy the Shack from us?" Flashbacks to Gideon and their fights of the deed to the Shack invaded Dipper's mind. He was suddenly on the offensive.

"Dipper!" Mabel hissed at him.

"Oh please," Pacifica said with a small laugh. "This property has no significant value. If you're looking for someone to buy, you'd have to go to someone with much lower standards."

 _And there's the Pacifica I remember_ , Dipper thought bitterly as he sipped at his coffee.

Pacifica seemed to have realized what she's said because in the next moment, the smile fell from her face, followed quickly by a flash of regret. She cleared her throat with a small cough.

"Um, anyways," she started again. "The real reason I'm here is because of you. I've recently heard that there had been...trespassers on one of my recently acquired properties last night."

"Say no more," Mabel said, puffing out her chest. "Normally, we only deal with the creepy, dorky stuff Dipper's into—"

"Hey!"

"But I think we're tough enough to take care of a couple of trespassers," Mabel said. She rolled up her t-shirt sleeve and starting flexing, as if she had any muscle to be proud of. "There's nothing too big for the Mystery Twins!"

Dipper had to repress the urge to roll his eyes.

Pacifica simply laughed, that same, weirdly warm laugh from before on the porch. "Mabel, sweety, while that is very impressive, I don't need you to 'take care' of anyone. According to the police, the trespassers were you. That's why I'm here."

Mabel's face fell, suddenly looking very confused. "What? But Dipper said the job last night was at the—" Mabel cut herself off with a gasp. "Oh my gosh, you bought back your family's mansion?"

Pacifica couldn't hide as the biggest smile swept across her face. "Well, it took quite a bit of convincing and an absolute mountain of legal papers, but yes! The Northwest Manor is now officially back in the hands of the Northwests."

"Great," Dipper grumbled into his coffee cup. "I guess you're here to gloat then? Or force us to turn ourselves in for trespassing?"

"Look," Pacifica sighed, "I understand I'm probably the last person you want to see, but believe it or not, I'm here to ask for your help. When I realized the two of you were in town, I can't say I wasn't surprised. But then I heard that you two were the best options for my—ah—little problem. I came by to say hi and apologize for how I acted when we were kids, but also because I know I can't handle this on my own."

It was then that Dipper glanced outside the kitchen window. He had to do a double take, nearly choking on his coffee when he saw what was outside. While the three of them had been distracted in the kitchen with real estate and childhood rivalries, Bill had apparently been very busy.

The demon had already managed to construct a massive pentagram on the front lawn out of branches and sticks, surrounded by other strange symbols and inscriptions. Now, normally, something like this wouldn't warrant a panic, that is, it wouldn't if it didn't look like Bill was about to sacrifice Gompers the goat in the middle of said pentagram in their back yard in broad daylight while a civilian was currently seated in their kitchen.

Dipper straightened so quickly in his chair he nearly toppled over his mug.

"A problem, you say?" Dipper said, perhaps a bit too loudly. "Oh, what a coincidence, apparently we have a problem too!"

Mabel looked at him like he'd grown two heads.

"Ah, you remember that, um, _friend_ we've been dealing with lately?" Dipper asked, looking pointedly out the window and into the yard beyond. Bill seemed to be chanting something now, a knife raised above Gompers, who was looking very unconcerned at being tied up and about to be slaughtered.

Mabel's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates, realization dawning on her. "Oh, yes! That problem! Dipper, how about you deal with that problem and I'll talk with Pacifica about hers?"

"Yes, absolutely, cheerio idea, Mabel!"

Before Dipper had a chance to slap himself in the face for saying "cheerio idea" to another live human being, he was out the door.

* * *

 

"You never let me have any fun," Bill pouted, sitting cross-legged on the Shack's lawn.

"Sorry if not allowing you to kill our goat makes me a killjoy," Dipper said.

Dipper had already managed to disassemble Bill's satanic summoning...thing, piling all the twigs and branches into a pile and starting a fire, just for an extra measure. The two sat on the lawn, side-by-side as they watched the fire burn. The sun had already began to set behind the trees, washing everything in blushing pinks and oranges.

Waddles snuffled in the dirt at Dipper's feet. He slapped Gomper's rump, startling the goat into the woods before Bill could get anymore ideas. They could hear his bleating traveling through the trees. Without warning Waddles gave an excited squeal and chased after Gompers into the woods.

Dipper let out a sigh. "Come on," he said. "We have to make sure nothing happens to that pig. Mabel would kill me."

With a grunt, Dipper hauled Bill to his feet, the two of them heading off into the woods. If anything, Dipper thought, a quick stroll through the woods would at least keep Bill out of trouble while Pacifica was still at the Shack. The last thing they needed was her finding out that the demon that had caused Weirdmageddon and had forced her family into shame and bankruptcy was staying as their house guest.

The two followed the shuffling and snorts of Waddles through the woods at a leisurely pace, keeping the pig within earshot, making sure he was okay. Bill picked leaves from the trees as they passed, tearing them to pieces with his long, gloved fingers and letting them flutter to the ground like confetti.

The canopy of leaves overhead let a stream of dappled sunlight wash over them. The sun glinted at them through the trees, like gems trapped behind a moth-eaten curtain. The summer sun warmed Dipper's skin, reminding him of long past summers and similar treks through the woods, crawling over boulders and tripping over roots.

Bill started whistling that same high-pitched tune Dipper had heard before. It sent chills down his spine, his head flooding of pictures of Bill coming towards him with a knife, blood everywhere and the searing pain of his broken ribs threatening to make him pass out.

Dipper cast a glance at Bill, his face freckled with the shadows cast by the trees. He didn't really have to worry about that anymore, did he? The incident in the kitchen had been over a month ago. Then again, Bill had tried to kill McGucket just last night. But, Dipper thought, Bill had been spending the nights with them this entire time and still had yet to kill him or Mabel in their sleep. Dipper wasn't sure if this thought was a comforting one or the fact that he should _have_ to think about it should terrify him.

Dipper cleared his throat, shattering the calm quiet of the woods and cutting Bill's song short. "So Mabel said you're the one that brought me home last night." He cast a quick look at Bill, who was still pulling leaves from passing trees.

Bill shrugged. "Well, yeah, Short Stack. After you stormed our of the mansion last night, I followed you and found you passed out on the ground next to your car."

Dipper looked at Bill as the demon continued to wrap his long fingers around leaves and tear them to pieces. Bill's face caught the light of the sun at just the right angle, making his brown skin look gold. Beautifully long eye-lashes fluttered over an eye the color of melted honey.

"So," Dipper said. "You're saying that you picked up my unconscious body and brought me home. Even after I told you I wanted nothing to do with you anymore?"

"Well," Bill said. "I did contemplate wringing your neck when I found you but I figured that would be too easy. If I were to ever kill you, I'd like to see the light leave your eyes when it happens."

"Thanks. That makes me feel a lot better," Dipper said. "No, Bill, I mean, why did you come back? I told you to go."

Bill slid a side-ways glance at Dipper. "Give me some credit, kid. You didn't think you'd get rid of me that easy, did you? You've still gotta get me out of this body, and I still have a mystery to help you solve."

Dipper contemplated Bill for a moment. "You came back because of our promise?"

Bill rolled his eyes. "Don't flatter yourself," Bill said. Torn leaves fluttered from his fingers to the ground. "I just never break a deal, all right?"

"Really?" Dipper asked. "What about Mabel's bubble deal?"

"Hey," Bill said, aiming a finger at Dipper. "Your sister's bubble was a mutual agreement."

Dipper raised his eyebrows. "And that whole puppet deal ten years ago?"

"Lordy, Lordy, Lordy," Bill said, exasperated as he flicked the rest of his torn leaves in Dipper's face. "You humans just never give anything _up_ , do you?"

"Well, to most humans, demonic possession's kinda a big deal."

"Yeah, well, that deal was completed anyhow," Bill said. "I got my puppet—you. And you eventually got all the answers you wanted in the end. Just not in the way you expected. See? As honest as a demon there ever was."

They continued to walk, Dipper staring at his feet, tripping over dirt and roots. Birds twittered somewhere through the trees as the woods began to grow darker and darker. Waddles continued to snuff along the ground in ahead of them. They'd have to start heading back to the Shack soon.

Dipper cleared his throat, breaking the silence. "All right Mr. Honest, last night then," he asked Bill. "Do you remember anything about finding a set of notes? Or something with writing and pictures?"

Bill slid a side-ways look at Dipper. "Can't say I do, Pine Tree."

Dipper blinked.

That didn't sound right, Dipper thought. He could've sworn he'd found some sort of notes last night. He had the fuzziest memory of looking at them right before he passed out. The images and the writing that had been on them were blurred out, but he definitely remembered them. And yet, when he'd woken up, he'd searched everywhere for them. He'd pulled out all his pockets, overturned his entire room, and yet still there were no notes.

Dipper looked up at Bill. "Are you sure?"

Bill grinned. "Geez, kid, lighten up. You're starting to get paranoid."

"Right," Dipper scoffed. "Spending time with you, being paranoid is a given."

"Consider me personally offended," Bill said. "And here I thought we were friends."

"Just what makes you think we're friends," Dipper said.

"Well," Bill said, "I consider anyone I've traded murder attempts with a friend."

"You have a strange definition of friends," Dipper said, looking back at his feet. It was starting to get more difficult to see, darkness creeping in among the tree trunks as the sun sunk further into the horizon.

"That is by far the least strange thing about me," Bill said, grinning widely.

Dipper rolled his eyes. He wished he'd gone on this walk by himself.

"What are you doing here anyways?" Dipper asked, kicking at a rock.

"Kid, we've just been over this. I'm here for you to get me back to my beautifully sexy geometric self," Bill said with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

"No," Dipper said, coming to a stop in the middle of the woods.

Bill stopped, turning to look back at him. He raised his eyebrows. "No?"

Dipper narrowed his eyes at Bill. Something didn't sit right with him. There was something else going on behind these scenes, something he wasn't getting. He thought of his missing notes, of McGucket and Bill's constant interference with his supernatural jobs. He thought of the fact that Bill had every right to leave and never come back after Dipper had yelled at him last night, but not only had he come back, he'd brought Dipper home to make sure he was safe. He thought about every doubt and second-guessing he'd gone through since he'd agreed to let Bill stay at the Shack. He thought about how Bill had not done a single thing to harm him or Mabel since that first night despite having every opportunity to. Something about it all was just so _bizarre_ , it wasn't like Bill at all.

"No," Dipper repeated. "There's another reason you're here. There has to be."

Bill blinked. "I don't know what to tell you, Pine Tree."

"Don't know, or don't want to tell me?" Dipper bit back.

"Hey," Bill said, taking a step towards Dipper. "If you have something to accuse me of—"

"Oh right, because you're so innocent, you've never done anything wrong," Dipper scoffed.

"Finally, you agree with me!"

"You _always_ have an ulterior motive," Dipper said. "I can't so much as ask you for a cup of coffee without getting a mug thrown at me."

"Maybe you should be more specific with your requests then."

"Tell me why you're here!" Dipper wasn't sure when he'd started shouting, or when he'd become so frustrated, but that didn't really matter. Dipper hadn't been so frustrated ever since he let Bill out of the basement and he was sick and tired of feeling like he was being left out of a loop he didn't even know existed. He needed _answers_.

"I already have!" Bill yelled. "Geez, Pine Tree, are you as stupid as you look?"

"I don't believe that's the whole story."

"Holy Martini on the rocks, kid, would you just _look_ at me?!" Bill screamed, seizing hold of Dipper's hoodie and shoving him so hard against a tree Dipper's lungs hurt. They were suddenly very close, leaving Dipper with nowhere to look but Bill's single burning gold eye. "I am _trapped_ inside a pathetic excuse for a meat sack. I couldn't use any of my powers if I tried and I am completely cut off from the dreamscape. I have no way to achieve any 'possible' ulterior motives, even if I wanted to."

Bill froze, his words tumbling to a stop. He blinked, the anger fading from his face as realization of what he'd just done flooded his eyes. He took his hands back, stepping back and turning away from Dipper. For a second, nothing happened. Then, Bill screamed. Bill screamed and cursed and hollered in languages Dipper couldn't even recognize. He kicked at the trunk of a tree, screaming at it before he ripped off his glove and began punching it until the bark rubbed his knuckles bloody. Dipper watched him scream until he stopped, his shoulders sagging as he fell forward, leaning his forehead against the tree trunk as he stared at the ground. He didn't make a sound.

Dipper took a cautious step forward, tiptoeing around so he was to the side of Bill and could see his face. He was breathing heavily. Blood dripped from his knuckles, running down his fingers, painting the leaves below red. His eye looked glassy—not wet, just shattered, almost.

"Look, Pine Tree," Bill muttered, his voice so hoarse, it sounded broken. "Whether you believe it or not, all I want is to get out of this body." He sighed. "No one ever tells you how exhausting it is to be a human. All these emotions and needs, it's enough to drive anyone insane—well, not quite as insane as I already was, but you get the point."

Dipper wasn't sure what he'd just seen, he still couldn't believe what he'd just seen had been real. But he could understand the distant look in Bill's eye. His bloody knuckles. How every line in his body seemed to slope downwards. For the first since he'd been in that body, Bill looked...human.

"Bill," Dipper said in a voice just barely above a whisper. Silence hung between them, heavy as stone. Dipper wasn't sure what to say.

Bill turned to look at Dipper, his forehead still leaning against the tree. Dipper could barely see the glint of his eye in the dying light of the sun.

"Pine Tree—"

A squeal ripped through the evening air, scattering the birds from their roosts. Dipper straightened. The squealing grew louder and more panicked. Bill lifted his head to look at Dipper and Dipper looked back.

Only one word fell from Dipper's lips. "Waddles."

In a second, the two of them were gone like bullets from a barrel. They sped through the woods, trees flying by either side of them, branches clawing at Dipper's clothes. The two of them stumbled into a clearing with Waddles wriggling on the ground, squealing hysterically. Dipper dove for the pig, skidding over dirt and twigs, his heart pulsing in his throat. This could not be happening. It couldn't, it just—

Dipper rolled Waddles onto his back, only to reveal a cluster of glowing blue butterflies tickling along his stomach, sending the pig into hysterics. The butterflies lifted into the air, one by one, fluttering away from the Waddles on lazy breezes. Once they were gone, Waddles rolled back to his hooves and stood up, happily licking at Dipper's face and snorting like nothing had happened.

"Wha—?" Dipper said, at a loss for words. "You're okay? I don't understand."

"Ah, Pine Tree."

Dipper looked up at the sound of concern in Bill's voice. His breath nearly caught in his throat when he realized what he was seeing.

The glowing blue butterflies that had been tickling Waddles hadn't flown away. They were still here, lingering at the edges of the clearing and fluttering around in the air above their heads. There had to be at least fifty of them, like floating colored Christmas lights, flitting between the leaves of the trees, trailing blue behind them.

Dipper stood up slowly, his jaw slightly slack as he looked around at the glowing clearing. "Wha-What are they?"

When Bill didn't answer, Dipper turned towards him. Bill looked away quickly and cleared his throat. "I-I have no idea. Never seen them before."

Something told Dipper Bill wasn't telling the truth, but before he could think more about it, he saw something bright blue moved at the edge of his vision, making him flinch. Something gentle and warm settled on his cheek, like a butterfly kiss. Another butterfly fluttered down to land on his shoulder. Then another to land on his head, his arm, his finger, his chest, one after another until he was covered in them and a hoard fluttered around his head like a churning, glowing cloud.

"Bill," Dipper asked, unable to keep the edge of panic from his tone. "What's happening?" There were lots of strange things in Gravity Falls, and more often than not, it was impossible to tell which were the good ones and which were the bad ones until it was too late.

Bill staggered back, like he wasn't comfortable being so close to so many of the strange glowing insects. "I-I don't know, Pine Tree."

Dipper lifted his arm, the butterflies resting there scattering before settling back onto him. They didn't seem dangerous. They weren't hurting him or turned into some sort of monster or anything. The entire clearing was filled with a glowing kaleidoscope of butterflies, radiating in the dark of the oncoming night. It was like watching a galaxy move up close. Butterfly wings and legs tickled at Dipper's skin, making him laugh.

"They sort of look like your blue fire, don't you think?" Dipper asked, waving his hand through them and watching as the butterflies followed.

When Bill didn't answer, Dipper looked to him. Bill was standing at the edge of the clearing as Waddles snuffled about his feet, seemingly uninterested in the glowing butterflies anymore. Bill stared at Dipper, his eye so wide, the blue of the butterflies could be seen in its reflection. Dipper felt himself glowing under the light of the butterflies, their warmth filling him until it tingled in his fingers and toes. Bill looked like he was in awe, in complete rapture of what he was seeing, and Dipper couldn't be sure if it was the butterflies or...something else.

In the next instant, every last butterfly swooped down to land on Dipper, covering him in a coat of glowing blue before they all shattered in a shower of glowing sapphire dust. They dissipated, their shimmering glow fading to submerge the clearing into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Struggling. That is what I'm doing: struggling. :)))))))


	8. Darling, I'm a Nightmare

"You _what?!_ " Dipper shrieked loud enough to scatter the birds outside.

"Look, Dipper, it's the only way I could get her out of here before she saw any," Mabel's eyes flitted from cleaning the coffee mugs in the sink towards the living room, where they could clearly hear Bill repeatedly chanting something that sounded vaguely Portuguese and ominous. "You know, freaky demon stuff. Besides," she shrugged as she put the clean coffee mugs on the drying rack, "I don't know, it might be fun."

Apparently, Mabel had gotten a text from Candy while she and Pacifica had been talking, saying Grenda's tour had been extended by two weeks, meaning their dinner date had been called off, giving Mabel time to entertain Pacifica. By the time Dipper and Bill had gotten back to the Shack with Waddles in tow, Pacifica had already left and the sky was scattered with stars.

"We're talking about the same person here, right?" Dipper said with ernest. "Pacifica Northwest. Mabel the last time we saw her, she tried to _sue_ us. And now you're meeting up for brunch?"

"Hey!" Mabel said, aiming a finger at her brother. "You do not get to judge, Mr. I'm Going to Let a Demon Loose on Gravity Falls Even Though My Sister Specifically Told Me Not To. And if you must know, we're going for a run next week in the morning and _then_ going out for breakfast."

"Mabel," Dipper pinched the bridge of his nose. "You don't even run."

"Well, who knows, maybe now's a good time to start!" Mabel said, spinning around the kitchen in a whirling dance. "Boop!" she said, tapping Dipper on the nose as she passed.

Dipper rubbed at his face, repressing a groan. He already knew he couldn't stop Mabel once she'd made a decision. He supposed he'd have to accept Pacifica hanging around here now.

"Okay, well," he sighed leaning against the counter. "Well what favor did she want to ask from us anyways?"

"Oh, um," Mabel spun to a stop. "Right, well, it wasn't exactly a favor as it was, um, a job."

Dipper studied his sister. "What kind of job?"  
"Oh, you know," Mabel said, forcing a casual tone into her voice. She picked idly at the edge of a dish cloth. "Your basic paranormal stuff."

"Stuff like?"

"Um, stuff like, cleaning out all the monsters in the old Northwest Manor," Mabel said a bit too quickly.

Dipper blinked. "What."

"Well I mean, come on Dipper," Mabel said, "think about it! How's she supposed to start living there again if the place is filled with monsters!"

"Yeah, monsters we have no idea how to fight!" Dipper retorted, springing away from the counter. "Please tell me you said no."

Mabel paused, glancing to the side. "If I told you I said no, would you believe me?"

"Mabel!"

"Sorry, Dipper!" Mabel said, her hands worrying at the hem of her t-shirt. "But she just looked so desperate and she said she wanted to make amends and I thought we could be friends, and you know how much I love making friends, so I just..." She made a hopeless gesture with her hands.

Dipper let out a groan. "Your extrovertedness is going to get me killed one day." Dipper could not deal with this. Not with everything else going on, this was just another heaping pile of stress to deal with.

"You know maybe it won't be that bad," Mabel said with a shrug of her shoulders. "Maybe we can call Grunkle Stan and see if he might be able to give us some tips. He and Ford were the ones that caught all those monsters to begin with."

"Mabel," Dipper sighed, sinking into a kitchen chair. He couldn't handle this, he _couldn't_. Not while he was dealing with Bill and trying to figure out what was going on with the town, not to mention he was apparently getting random blackouts and the whole butterfly thing that had just happened in the woods. He still had no idea what _that_ was about.

" _Please_ , Dipper?" Mabel begged as she kneeled in front of Dipper, her hands resting on his knees. "I really really think she's sorry for everything that happened when we were kids. I believe she's doing her best to make amends and that we should too. She's offered to pay us a ridiculous amount of compensation, too."

Dipper brought his gaze up to look at Mabel. He knew as soon as he did it, he'd made a mistake. Never _ever_ look at Mabel when she's begging for something, she's bound to use her signature "pig face" (because pigs are _so_ much cuter than puppies, of course). How could anyone say no to those big, pleading brown eyes?

"If you don't want to do it for me," Mabel finally said, "at least think of all the knowledge to be gained from investigating those monsters!"

Dipper silently cursed himself. Mabel knew his weaknesses better than anyone else.

"Fine," he sighed. "But only for the knowledge."

"The knowledge!" Mabel yelled, throwing her hands in the air and leaping up before letting her arms fall around Dipper in a hug, laughing so loudly in his ears it sounded like tinkling bells. It reminded him of old Summer and Thanksgiving memories, when they spent their school breaks at the Shack with Stan and Ford and everything was normal—well, as normal as it could be in Gravity Falls and they spent their lazy days filled with adventures.

Dipper couldn't help but giggle into Mabel's hair, wrapping his arms tight around his sister, infected by her laugh.

Was exterminating the Northwest Manor going to be unimaginably hard? Sure. Was he in for a lot of work? Of course. Was Mabel going to end up shirking most of the work onto him anyways? Most likely. And did he still have a ridiculous amount of things to worry about until his brain disintegrated and he collapsed into panic attacks? Absolutely.

But all of that, absolutely all of that was fine. Because it was for Mabel.

* * *

 

Dipper found himself in a familiar place.

He was in what he'd come to call the White Space, with an endless corridor stretching on forever in front and behind him that had all but consumed his dreams. The bleached whiteness of the world still unsettled him beyond words. It was as if it were so sterile, it couldn't possibly be hospitable to any form of life. Like if he stayed here for too long, he too would become stripped of color, of everything that made him who he was until he faded into nothingness.

This was not a place for humans.

The same voices as before echoed down the hall.

"Why have you yet to succeed?" the high-pitched voice asked. The voice was calm, but there was a cruelness in it that sent shivers down Dipper's spine.

"It is proving more...difficult than I'd first thought," came the second voice, a smooth baritone that sounded like melted rich chocolate.

"I don't care what you must do to get it done," the first voice snapped. "Just make sure it gets done."

Dipper swallowed the rising lump in his throat and took a few cautious steps forward, making his way down the hall and towards the source of the voices.

"But how?" came the second voice. "I'm at the end of my rope here, he's proving to be unyielding."

"Ah," the first voice said. "Now that is simple. Just get to the thing he loves most," the first voice explained. "Then watch him fall."

The ground suddenly dropped out from under Dipper, a black hole opening up right below his feet. His stomach shot into his throat, a scream ripping from his mouth. He would've fallen straight down had he not caught himself with his arms hooked over the edge of the hole. If he hadn't been panicked before, he was sure as hell panicked now. Dipper's feet kicked at air as he scrambled to pull himself out of the hole, his own heart racing in his ears. He keened, desperate for air, desperate to get back on solid ground. All the while, the first voice echoed inside his skull, repeating its last words.

"Watch him fall."

"Watch him fall."

"Watch him fall."

Dipper kicked uselessly. His grip slipped and he slid backwards. Dipper fell through the hole in the floor and into the black oblivion beyond, listening to the same words in his head over and over.

"Watch him fall."

"Watch him fall."

"Watch him fall."

 

Dipper woke in a cold sweat, panting as if he'd just run a five minute mile. His heart hammered in his chest as if he was still falling. This dream, whatever it'd been, had been different. Not only had he never fallen like that, but there was a new quality about this one. It'd felt real. Of course, most dreams felt real when you're in them, Dipper knew that, but this was different. Even now, as he sat panting in bed, the dream had seemed real, like he'd just fallen into an empty pit and his eyes burned from looking at nothing but endless white. It'd felt so real, Dipper could still feel his stomach in his throat, the unimaginable fear of falling into nothingness.

A tear streaked down Dipper's cheek and he pressed his eyes into his knees, burying his face in his sheets. What was happening to him? He felt like he was falling apart.

* * *

 

Dark circles pooled beneath Dipper's eyes. Exhaustion settled in his limbs, his fingers wrapped around a comfortingly warm cup of coffee.

He watched Bill from across the kitchen table. The demon had just poured a spoonful of hot sauce into his coffee and sipped at it, whistling that same, eerie tune he was so fond of as he drew what looked like demonic symbols on the front cover of the morning newspaper in red crayon. A week had passed since Dipper and Bill's job at the Northwest Manor as well as Dipper's subsequent black out. Mabel had already left for her run with Pacifica and the house was uncharacteristically quiet with Sofia and Waddles snoozing in a pleasantly warm ray of morning sunlight in the living room.

"Oh," Bill said cheerfully as he read the headline for one of the articles. "Train Crash in Huston Killed Twenty," he said, carefully ripping out the story. "Now _that_ will make for a wonderful bedtime story." Bill carefully folded up the piece of newspaper and slipped it in his pocket before continuing with his defacement of the morning news.

Morning birds twittered outside. Sir Charles Whiskerton ticked happily away on the wall. Steam from Dipper's coffee curled in front of his face. The morning sunlight streamed into the kitchen, making Bill's hair shine like spun gold. The silk of his gloves flashed across the table and Dipper could pick out Mabel's gold glitter eyeshadow on the corner of the demon's eye. Dipper watched the flick of Bill's eye, the ease of his smile, the nimble way his fingers spidered across the newspaper, drawing lines of red.

"I keep having weird dreams," Dipper said, shattering the silence.

Dipper hadn't had a wink of sleep since his last dream, the one with him falling. Every time he tried, the dream would just come back, again and again, each time just as real as before until it got to the point were Dipper was too scared to even try to go to sleep.

Bill barely spared him a glance before going back to his work. "Hm. Weird how?"

"I was hoping you might be able to tell me," Dipper said, pushing his coffee aside and leaning forward.

Bill let out a small laugh, still not looking up from his crayon doodling. "And why would I be able to tell you about your own dreams?"

"Well isn't that what dream demons do?" Dipper asked. "Interpret dreams, control them, feed them to people."

Bill's red crayon stilled. "Pine Tree," he said, keeping his eye trained on the newspaper. "I don't have access to the Mindscape, you know that."

"Then why do I get the feeling that you're the one messing with my head?" Dipper hissed.

"Pine Tree, whatever you're seeing in your dreams, it's not me," Bill said, finally looking up at Dipper. His eye flashed dangerously in the morning light.

"Then what could it be, Bill?" Dipper yelled, slamming his hand on the table. Waddles gave a surprised snort from the living room. Bill blinked, leaning back in his chair like he couldn't believe Dipper Pines of all people had just lashed out.

But Dipper didn't care. By this point he didn't give a flying fuck. He was scared. He was scared and he was angry and he was sick and tired of the haunting dreams that came for him in the night. He was tired of being lied to and tired of Bill making his life hell. He was tired of being tired, of waking up screaming in the middle of the night.

"Pine Tree," Bill said carefully. "What have you seen in your dreams?"

"You should know! You're the one that put them there!"

"Pine Tree, I told you, all my normal powers are gone. I couldn't possibly—"

"I don't believe you!" Dipper shouted. He was on his feet now, breathing heavily. Why wouldn't Bill just admit it? Why wouldn't Bill just admit to messing with Dipper's head, to forcing terrifying nightmares into his dreams and making him crazy with fear? Dipper already knew it was Bill after all, the dreams had his M.O. all over them. So why? Why why why wouldn't Bill just _admit it already?_

Bill looked up at Dipper, that maddeningly calm expression still on his face. "Pine Tree, whatever dreams you might be having I couldn't have possibly—"

"Shut up!" Dipper screamed, slapping his hands over his ears. "Just shut up shut up shut up! Since the day I let you out, you've been trying to undermine me, you've been trying to get to Mabel, to manipulate us like you did when we were twelve."

"Pine Tree," Bill said, raising from his seat with caution, like he was facing a rabid dog. "You need to calm down. I haven't done anything to you or your sister."

"Liar!" Dipper yelled. "You've done nothing but lie! You lied about the notes from the Northwest Manor—"

"I told you before, kid, there were no notes!"

"You lied in the woods, you lied about my dreams, you've lied about everything! I can't believe I ever trusted you! All you want to do, all you've ever wanted to do is destroy us!"

"Pine Tree," Bill said, his hands clenching into fists. "Would you shut up and listen to me for a second? You're acting crazy."

"Get out."

Silence dropped on them like a bomb, flooding the kitchen. Bill stared at Dipper, his eye wide. Dipper heaved his breaths. His eyes stung from lack of sleep and an anger pulsed in his chest that made him confused more than anything. Why didn't Bill just admit it?

"I want you out of the Shack," Dipper repeated. "Consider our promise broken."

"You—" Bill stumbled over his words, like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. It was a rare sight to see the dream demon so caught off guard. "You can't do that."

"Yes I can, the Shack is in Mabel and mine's care," Dipper said, glaring at Bill. "We can do what we want and I want you out of here right now."

"Pine Tree—"

The door to the Shack swung open, Mabel stumbling in through the door, red in the face, covered in sweat, and gasping for air.

"Whew!" she said, stumbling across the kitchen and to the sink, oblivious to the demon vs. boy standoff in the middle of the kitchen. "That was—woah, that was something else." Dipper thought she was going to get a drink of water when she turned the faucet on, but instead she ducked her entire head into the sink, letting the water wash over her head and neck as she let out a sigh of relief.

Bill took a step forward, Dipper keeping an intense eye trained on him.

"Pine Tree," Bill said in a low whisper. "You can't make me leave."

"Yes I can." Dipper shot Bill a murderous glare. Bill's fists clenched and he let out a hiss. "What about our deal?"

"You already broke it when you started harassing Mabel and me. And when you attacked McGucket."

Bill's eye flashed. "I told you, that isn't me. And McGucket—"

"Get out," Dipper hissed. "I don't care, just leave."

Bill glared at Dipper, his fists clenched, his eye flashing. For a second, Dipper was certain Bill was going to hit him, or curse him, or do something. More than anything, Dipper was scared that Bill would ignore him, that he'd simply sit back down at the table and refuse to leave. Instead, Bill glanced back at Mabel with her head under the kitchen faucet before shooting Dipper one last glare and storming out of the Shack.

Dipper didn't hear the door slam shut or the stomping of feet down the porch steps. Instead, what he heard was the door swinging open and someone uttering a noise of surprise. He heard an awkward hello from Pacifica, which died in he mouth as Bill shoved by her. In the next moment, Dipper saw Pacifica jog into the kitchen, barely winded, her slick blonde hair in a ponytail so perfect, Dipper wanted to rip it off of her head. She grinned at him, clad in a amethyst running tank-top, exercise pants and two-hundred dollar sneakers.

"Hi Dipper!" she said, jogging in place. "Good to see you again."

Dipper glanced her way, muttered something incoherent and sunk into a kitchen chair.

Pacifica didn't seem to notice his melancholy. She simply turned her smile in Mabel's direction. "Ready for our next lap?" she asked cheerfully. "Just another two miles!"

Mabel let out a groan that could be heard over the sound of running water. She turned off the faucet and raised her soaked head, water dripping onto the floor of the kitchen.

"Actually, Pacifica," she said, her face still flushed as she leaned against the counter for support. "I was just going to stay here with Dipper. You know, help him with research for clearing out the mansion."

Pacifica's face fell, her in-place steps loosing momentum. "Oh."

Dipper glanced between Mabel and Pacifica's crestfallen face.

"Actually, Mabel," Dipper spoke up. "I've been trying to get a hold of Stan, but he still hasn't answered any of my calls, so there's not much to go on right now. Go ahead with Pacifica, I'll be fine."

Pacifica's face looked like someone had shone a flashlight up her rear. She lit up. "Oh great!" she said, seizing Mabel's wrist and hauling her back towards the door. "Come on, Mabel, we can't stick around here too long, it'll trash our heart rates."

Mabel passed by Dipper, shooting him daggers, mouthing the words _I'll get you_ , along with making some rather rude hand gestures. Dipper simply grinned, watching Pacifica pull his sister back out of the Shack and towards privileged white-girl workout hell.

While it was true that Dipper still hadn't heard anything back from Stan since he'd been trying to call him in the past week, that didn't mean there wasn't any work to be done. Dipper had been doing research and asking around town, trying to see if anyone knew what kinds of monsters were lurking inside the old Northwest Manor. He was sure he could've given Mabel some work to do had she stuck around, but to be completely honest, he could never pass up a chance to bug his sister like a good brother should. He'd get hell when she got back from the rest of her run with Pacifica, but it was worth it.

As soon as he heard the door slam shut again, Dipper's spirits fell. He'd been left in the Shack alone, spare for Sofia and Waddles who were still dozing in the living room. He realized what he'd just done. He'd kicked Bill out of the Shack.

Dipper sighed, leaning forward on the kitchen table and burying his face in his hands. What was he doing?

_"He's going to be your responsibility, Dipper," Mabel said, aiming her finger at him. "Anything he does is going to be on you."_

Mabel's words echoed inside his head as he dragged his hands down his face. She'd been right. Bill was his responsibility, technically speaking. He's the one that let him out, therefore Dipper should've been ready for any and all consequences that come from it. But he hadn't been ready. He'd been less than ready. It was nearly a month and a half later, and Dipper was no closer to figuring out the anomalies of Gravity Falls and was instead loosing his mind over dreams he couldn't control and a set of lost notes that might or might not have ever existed. He'd thought letting Bill out would help him, but instead it just felt like he'd taken two massive steps backwards.

Dipper let out a groan and buried his face in his arms folded on the table. He didn't _want_ to be the responsible one. He didn't _want_ to take care of the Shack. He didn't _want_ to babysit a multidimensional demon. He didn't _want_ to be the bigger person. He was twenty-three years old. He should be still at school working on his masters in media arts and design, already pitching ideas of his ghost hunting show to networks while posting his own home-made investigative videos on his YouTube channel. But no, he had to bypass going to college all together and put everything else on hold to take care of the Shack for Stan after Ford died because they had to make sure no one ever got their hands on all the "dangerous" stuff still locked in the basement—like a reality-warping dream demon for instance. Well, they'd done an absolutely _fantastic_ job on that front.

Dipper let out a shuddering breath, his nose buried in the crook of his elbow. He was so tired. The nightmares from the past week kept hounding him where ever he turned. He swore he heard someone say "Watch him fall" at least eight times a day. He'd torn his room apart looking for those notes he'd sworn he'd seen on that night with McGucket at the Northwest Manor. He didn't know what was happening. His life was falling apart beneath his fingertips. And it was all Bill's fault.

Dipper's fingers curled into the fabric of his hoodie, his nails digging into the skin beneath. _Damn it._ Why wouldn't Bill just admit it? Just admit that he was the cause of everything, that Dipper could just blame him like he always did and move on with his life. _Why was Bill doing this to him?_

Letting loose a guttural scream, Dipper's arm lashed out and he flung his coffee mug across the kitchen, the ceramic shattering against the wall and spilling caffeine everywhere. He was glad the demon was gone, thankful to never have to see that stupid grinning face ever again. The worst was over. Dipper could move on.

And yet...something _other_ than rage tugged at Dipper's heart. Something that confused him and that he was sure didn't belong, but that pulled at his heartstrings anyways.

Regret.

For what, he couldn't be sure. But for every thought of how happy he was to never see Bill again, there was at least one other for how beautiful Bill's golden eye looked in the morning sunshine, or how empty the Shack would seem with one less person in it, or how how quiet the house would be in the mornings, no longer waking up to sounds of Bill screaming arguments to Sofia about the long term effects of the Magna Carta.

But before Dipper could start smashing more dishes in his anger and frustration, the door to the Shack banged open. Dipper spun towards it.

"Bill!" he called. "I swear if that's you—!"

Pacifica came stumbling through the entryway of the kitchen. If she'd looked in peak shape ten minutes ago, she looked the opposite now. She was a mess, with half her hair having fallen out of her ponytail, her face flushed beat red. One of her shoes was missing. Large claw marks of some sort were raked down her arms and she was struggling for breath.

"It's Mabel," Pacifica gasped between breaths.

Fear automatically gripped Dipper, its ice-cold fist wrapping around his heart.

"She's gone," Pacifica said, tears in her eyes and panic breaking her voice. "Mabel's gone. I didn't know what to do. We were out on our run and they just took her—"

"Pacifica," Dipper said, seizing the blond by the shoulders, forcing her to focus on him. "What are you talking about? _Who_ took Mabel?"

Pacifica looked up at him, her bright blue eyes wide with terror as she shook beneath Dipper's hands. Her calm, collected demeanor was shattered. "The dinosaurs," she breathed. "The dinosaurs took her."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're wondering: 
> 
> YES, this fic is going to be a long one.


	9. Breath Me Back to Life

Dipper's feet pounded the ground, his breathing echoing agonizing loud in his ears as his backpack thumped against his back. Now, here was a familiar scene. The ridiculously rich, attractive, blonde girl running hot on his tail was new, though.

Dipper ran down the side of the main road that lead from the Shack into town.

"What kind were they!" Dipper called over his shoulder.

"I don't know!" Pacifica said, keeping pace despite her missing shoe.

Dipper had to bite back the smart words that leapt to the tip if his tongue. Lashing out would not help Mabel right now.

"Well what did they look like?" Dipper shouted back.

"Um, pretty big? And scaly!"

Dipper let out a frustrated sigh—a very difficult feat to accomplish while running. _Useless_.

"Oh! And it had wings!" Pacifica shouted, catching Dipper's attention. "And could fly!"

Dipper skidded to a stop right before he hit a felled tree across the middle of the road, Pacifica nearly tripping over him before she managed to slow herself. Looking off to the right, he saw what had caused the blocked roadway. A massive tunnel had been burrowed through the woods lining the edge of the road. Massive oaks tilted sideways, ripped up from the ground by the roots. Some were snapped in half with trunks too thick for Dipper to even wrap his arms around.

"' _It_ '?" Dipper repeated with a pointed glare. "I thought you said there were multiple of them."

"There were!" Pacifica said, hands on her knees as she struggled for breath. "We were attacked by a massive one with tiny arms and Mabel yelled at me to get back, like she was going to take the thing on on her own and I was like, 'Honey, I've taken classes in pilates and self-defense and let me tell you—'"

"Pacifica!" Dipper interrupted. "Sister. Dinosaurs. Point. Now!"

"Right, sorry," Pacifica panted. "But when she was trying to go after the big guy, this flying one came in and just picked her up off the ground and took off with her."

Dipper thought about this as he caught his breath. It sounded like what Pacifica was talking about was a T-rex, followed by a Pterodactyl. But that didn't make any sense. If the sap holding the dinosaurs in place from their first summer had finally melted, that would explain the Tyrannosaurus, but Dipper had seen the only Pterodactyl crushed under the collapsed tunnel and old church. That is unless—Dipper's heart sank. The nest.

The baby Pterodactyls they'd seen ten summers ago must have somehow survived and found a way to the surface. Which meant, not only were they dealing with a T-rex and a Pterodactyl, but now they were dealing with a T-rex and a whole _brood_ of Pterodactyls. Dipper silently cursed himself. He'd thought the town had been quiet for too long, it was only a matter of time before another big monster like the ogre attacked.

"Alright, okay," Dipper said to Pacifica, her face bright red and dripping with sweat. "So, dinosaurs. Did you see where they took her?"

She shook her head. "No, but the big one went off into the woods that way." She pointed to the hole in the tree line off to their right.

Dipper should have figured.

"Alright, you stay here," Dipper said, pointing at Pacifica as he started towards the big gash in the woods. "Keep out of the way. I'll be back."

"Wha—Why does everyone think I'm useless!" she called after him, but he was already charging through the woods, the leaves closing behind him.

* * *

 

Dipper heard them before he saw them. They screeched like banshees, deafening loud in the forest, slamming into each other with their tank-like, armored bodies, trees splintering beneath their massive claws.

Dipper crept up on them, hiding behind trees on the outskirts of the clearing. For some reason, they'd all decided to congregate here, together, like rainwater trickling towards the lowest point. To Dipper, it didn't make any sense. He saw the T-rex, slamming into trees and roaring towards the sky. Above the trees, three pterodactyl circled, cawing every now and then like vultures. Two more sat among the upper branches of the trees, just out of reach of the Tyrannosaurus, taunting him.

Dipper's heart dropped into his stomach when he saw Mabel, passed out and limp like a rag doll, clutched in the claws of the largest ones that rested in the trees. They hadn't eaten her at least, he told himself. _Find the silver lining, Dipper_. But still, how was he supposed to take on five fully grown pterodactyls and a T-rex? This wasn't Jurassic World. He wasn't the fabulously ripped Chris Pratt with a motorcycle and a pack of velociraptors at his beck and call. All he had was a backpack full of mirrors, holy water, a handful of hand-written notes, and a sawed-off shot gun, none of which seemed particularly effective against twelve-ton jurassic monstrosities.

"So what's the plan?"

Dipper nearly jumped out of his skin as a voice came from behind him. He spun around on high alert, ready to fight before he came to a dead stop. A pair of determined blue eyes blinked up at him. Dipper lowered his arm. He'd just nearly punched Pacifica Northwest in the face.

"What are you doing here?" he hissed, crouching back down beside her.

Pacifica drew herself up, a determined look on her face. "I'm here to help."

"Pacifica," Dipper groaned. "You can't. You aren't trained in this stuff like Mabel and I are—"

"I wasn't able to protect Mabel, and therefore I'm the reason she was taken," Pacifica snapped. "Which means I am _going_ to help get her back. I'm trying to be a good—a good," she stumbled on her words, like she wasn't sure which one would be the most appropriate. " _Acquaintance_ ," she finally decided. "And I am not going to let you get in the way of that."

Dipper sighed in resignation. It looked like after she escaped her parents' shadow, Pacifica had grown to be as stubborn as Mabel. There was no escaping her now. She was going to be an absolute nightmare.

"So," she said, settling in among the bushes and looking out at the collection of dinosaurs in front of them. "What do we do now?"

Dipper shook his head. "I don't know. Last time we faced a pterodactyl—"

" _Wait_ ," Pacifica cut him off. "You've fought dinosaurs _before_? Like _real_ dinosaurs."

Dipper ground his teeth. He almost missed Bill. Well, not really, but Pacifica was getting him there. "Yes, they kidnapped Waddles and there was this whole mess. Now if you're all caught up, maybe you can help me with a plan."

"Well, how'd you take them down before?"

"My uncle punched it in the face."

"Oh."

"Yeah," Dipper said. "So unless you want to use your pilates or whatever to climb a hundred-foot tree and punch five pterodactyls in the face, I suggest we come up with something else."

"Well maybe there's a way to get up there," Pacifica said, studying the trees with the pterodactyls roosting in them. "Do you have some sort of rope your bag? Or a ladder back at the Shack? Or—"

"Grappling hook," Dipper said, the thought hitting him in the face like a brick. "Mabel's grappling hook."

Dipper's eyes flitted from pterodactyls to T-rex to the trees, his brain working a mile a minute now. His hand flew to his bag, the ancient grappling hook strapped securely to the outside. "If we could distract the T-rex and pterodactyls long enough to sneak in and get to Mabel using the grappling hook, maybe we can get her away and figure out how to take down the dinosaurs with out worrying about getting her hurt."

He looked back to find Pacifica's eyes alight with either excitement or mania, he couldn't be sure.

"Sounds fun," she said, grinning much too widely for someone who was about to fight a fifty foot dinosaur. "Now how do you distract and two ton T-rex and his flying friends?"

"Yeah, sounds like an impossible riddle," Dipper agreed.

It was then, his eye landed on something strapped around Pacifica's waist. "Wait, hold up, is that a fanny pack?" Dipper asked in slight disbelief, mostly because this was Pacifica _Northwest_ wearing the most unfashionable accessory known to man.

She looked down. "Oh, yeah. My running bag ripped and I need something to carry my supplies." She unzipped the pack and started pulling out things. "Some vitamin water for electrolytes, energy bars, an orange—great source of Vitamin C by the way, running lights and reflective tape, some jerky—"

"Wait." Dipper snatched hold of Pacifica's wrist, a bag of beef jerky still in her hand. The gears in his head started to click together, one by one. "I think I have a plan."

* * *

 

The scent of smoking meat wafted through the trees, strong enough to make Dipper's empty stomach growl. All he'd had for breakfast was some coffee and spite. He shook his head. _Focus, idiot. Mabel's in trouble._

The smell must have been working, the T-rex paused in his roaring and clawing at the tree trunks and sniffed at the air. He turned his massive head to the side curiously. The other three pterodactyls came in to land at the highest tree branches, raising their beaks to sniff at the air.

"Hey!" Pacifica's shrill voice ripped through the forest. All six scaly heads whipped around to look at the woman, clad in purple running gear and flashing from head to toe in reflective tape and running lights, a fistful of beef jerky on fire in her hand, standing in the middle of the forest.

For a moment, nothing moved. Then Pacifica shoved the rape whistle hanging around her neck between her lips and blew. A shriek bounced between the trees, filling the forest, loud enough to split Dipper's head in two. At the sound, all hell broke loose. The T-rex let out a roar and the pterodactyls shrieked louder than the whistle. Pacifica bolted, weaving in and out between the trees, pulling the dinosaurs in with all three senses of sound, sight, and smell as she continued to blow on her whistle.

The T-rex charged after her, barreling over trees. The pterodactyls stretched out their wings, readying for take-off. Dipper took aim for the tree branch right below Mabel's dangling arm. He shot the grappling hook, but the pterodactyl took flight too soon, the branch dipping beneath its weight. The hook wrapped around the pterodactyl's claw.

Dipper had just enough time to whisper "Oh, no." before the reptilian bird took to the skies, Dipper tied to it like a kite string.

Dipper went flying. Literally. The pterodactyl lifted into the sky, only to be momentarily caught by Dipper's weight. It looked down to find that a rather heavy, rather unarmed human was tied to its ankle, and man did that not seem to make it happy. The bird let out a caw and flew higher, raising out of the treetops, seemingly forgetting about the jerky and flashing Pacifica for the moment.

Dipper yelled, gripping tight to the grappling hook gun, trying to avoid smashing into trees. Branches clawed at him, knocking his hat off and leaving open gashes on his face. Leaves slipped down his shirt and in his shoes. Dipper pulled himself up as much as possible and hit the retract button on the grappling hook. The mechanisms inside began to whir, woking overtime to overcome the force of Dipper's weight, paired with the forward pull of the pterodactyl.

By the time he cleared the trees, his arms screamed from exhaustion. It felt like his fingers were welded in place. He felt like he couldn't keep hold any longer. But then he looked up and saw Mabel trapped in giant, razor-sharp claws, inching ever closer as the hook reeled him in. His grip tightened.

Glancing down, Dipper could see as they passed over Pacifica, in all her purple, flashing, smoking meat glory, weaving in and out between the trees, a T-rex and a handful of pterodactyls charging after her. Out of the corner of his eye, Dipper saw something darting between the trees, a dark shadow streaking parallel to Pacifica.

Before Dipper could get a good look, however, the pterodactyl looked back to find an annoying human still attached to its claw. It let out a piercing screech and began to zigzag, tilting from side to side, no doubt in an attempt to shake Dipper loose.

Dipper screamed and shut his eyes, desperately trying to hold on. If he let go now, not only would he fail in rescuing Mabel, but he would also die from a fifty-foot drop. Then that'd be three Pines dead in five years.

When Dipper opened his eyes again, he was less than five feet from the pterodactyl's claws. He glanced down again to see the T-rex and the other pterodactyls still chasing Pacifica. The shadow from before was still there, too. Then, almost too fast to see, Dipper watched as the blur leapt from the ground, jumping from tree branch to tree branch, gaining altitude until it landed on the first pterodactyl. With seconds, the dinosaur let out a deathly screech and fell out of the sky, crashing into branches on its way back to Earth. The shadow moved jumped between trees to the next pterodactyl. He was moving too fast to see, but Dipper could've sworn he saw a flash of blond hair amidst the moving streak.

Dipper looked away Pacifica and her shadowy savior to find himself closing in on the last few inches of grappling line. The hook clicked into place and Dipper had to let go to grab hold of the pterodactyl's large, scaly leg. He saddled himself on to the claw, above where Mabel hung listlessly, her hair fluttering in the wind. He began trying to pry open his sister's scaly prison.

The pterodactyl must've felt him wriggling around beneath its toes. It started to attack at him with its free claw. Ragged gashes opened up along Dipper's chest. He yelled trying to bat away the dinosaur while simultaneously shielding his face.

Finally, Dipper ripped the dagger from his belt and slashed at the pterodactyl's palm. The creature let out a screech, its grip on Mabel loosening. Mabel dropped a few inches and Dipper's heart leapt into his throat. _Okay, so_ don't _let the giant flying monster carrying your sister drop her to her death._

Dipper looked back up, only to find that they'd already flown to the edges of Gravity Falls city limits. The massive cliff—the one Ford had told him was a UFO landing sight—loomed over them. The pterodactyl had been too distracted trying to rid itself of Dipper, that it hadn't been paying attention to where it was going. They were heading straight for the cliff's face.

Acting on little more than instinct, Dipper raised the knife in his hand and sunk it to the hilt in the reptilian bird's chest.

The pterodactyl let out a surprised-sounding squawk before it tilted forward and began to fall, tumbling over itself, wings flapping uselessly.

"Mabel!" he screamed, reaching out to grab her. But they were spiraling out of control, the world turning into a whirlpool of colors around them. He could feel them loosing altitude. He blacked out.

They plummeted towards the ground.

* * *

 

Dipper woke with a groan, his head throbbing and his back aching. Something hard and rough was digging into his stomach, making him feel fit to puke. He opened his eyes only to see nothing but green. With a huff, he blew the leaves out of his face and looked around.

He was stranded, still nearly thirty feet up in an pine tree. (Haha, yes, very punny.) Dipper blinked. He was safe. The fall hadn't killed him. Instead, he'd been caught thirty feet short by a tree branch. He was alive. Dipper had never believed in luck before, but damn if his faith wasn't tested in that one moment.

Then his eyes fell to the forest floor below. The pterodactyl lay on the ground, a knife sticking out of its chest and its wings bent at unnatural angles. Dipper didn't have to see it up close to know that it was dead, its wide, glassy eyes the size of basketballs staring up at him, unseeing. Less than five feet from the jurassic bird, lay a body—a human body, with auburn hair splayed everywhere, limbs bent and bloody, and a bright yellow running shirt torn to shreds.

Dipper's heart stopped in his chest. " _Mabel!_ "

* * *

 

It had taken less than fifteen minutes and quite a few unexpected falls before Dipper managed to climb down from the trees. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he sprinted for his sister's body, ignoring the searing pain in his side telling him his ribs had been broken again.

He dove for her, pulling her limp body into his lap and cradling her head.

"Mabel," he choked, tears already making his throat swell. "Mabel, Mabel, Mabel, oh no, please. Please be okay."

He pushed the hair out of her face and he had to force back another sob. A large bruise took up most her face, scratches and claw marks covering her in blood. Her face was pale, like a corpse.

"Mabel," he said, shaking her shoulder. Her head rolled limply on her neck. He felt his heart break. "Mabel, no. No, no, no, no, no. Please, Mabel, you have to wake up. Please."

Tears fell onto her face. Dipper let out a sob guttural enough to rip his throat in two. This could not be happening. It just _couldn't_. It wasn't _fair_. Dipper had done everything, _everything_ , to protect her.

"Mabel, come on, wake up."

Just then, Dipper heard a rustling through the trees. His head snapped up, pulling his sister's limp body close. His hand flew to the knife strapped to his belt, only to realize with a jolt that it was gone, still buried in the chest of the pterodactyl five feet away. His mind racing in a panic, he gabbed whatever was closest to him—a broken tree branch—and turned to face the rustling, raising it like a bat. He was a mess. His nose was running, his eyesight blurry from crying, and it felt like if he moved, his heart would shatter into a million pieces. But damn it, he was going to protect his sister, dead or not, until his last breath. _Just watch me._

Dipper swore he saw something moving through the trees towards them, floating in and out between the branches. He caught a glimpse of purple and for a second he thought it was Pacifica before realizing the shape was too high. The shadow moved closer to them, solid, but hidden. Dipper's heart raced. He felt like time had stopped.

He raised his tree branch, ready to defend the both of them—when he heard a cough. He looked down to find Mabel coughing in his lap. Dipper glanced back up, only to find the shadow figure had vanished. He looked back down at the sound of another fit of coughing. Mabel rolled over and onto the ground on her hands and knees, hacking like she was trying to puke up a lung. She coughed up phlegm and mucus, wracking her lungs for air, but she didn't cough up any blood.

Dipper stared in wide-eyed disbelief as Mabel gained back her breath, letting out a gasp as she finally fell back to sit on her rear. She tilted her head back towards the sky and gasped for air before letting her head fall forward again. She took another gasp and looked to find Dipper staring at her like he'd just seen a resurrection. Her eyebrows furrowed as she looked at him, her cheeks pink and her eyes bright.

"What?" she croaked. "Do I have something on my face?"

Dipper swore his heart leapt into his throat. At first he choked. Then he laughed. He let out a loud, booming laugh that startled Mabel, but he didn't care. He flung his arms around his sister, laughing into her hair that smelled like forest pines and licorice candy. He laughed and cried, holding a bewildered Mabel so tight, he thought his arms would break.

"Um," Mabel said, her voice very quiet. "Are you okay?"

"I thought I'd lost you," he sobbed. "I thought you were gone."

After a moment, Mabel raised her arms and hugged him back. "It's okay," she whispered. "I'm fine. I'm right here."

Instead of calming him, her words let loose another damn inside him and Dipper just collapsed into her arms, crying and laughing and holding her tight. The two sat in the middle of the woods, Mabel's arms wrapped around him as the tree branches rustled and the summer sun winked down at them.

It was the best feeling in the world.


	10. Even Though I Hate You

They'd been found like that, holding each other while Dipper cried. As soon as she saw them, Pacifica let out a shriek to rival a pterodactyl and fell on the both of them, trapping them in a crushing hug. The three of them laughed and cried and hugged.

They walked back to the Shack through the woods together, Pacifica walking very close to Mabel as she lead them all back to the Shack. She still had all of her reflective tape on, her lights still flashing, bouncing off tree trunks. She was talking about a mile a minute, explaining what had happened and how they'd rescued Mabel, every other sentence interrupted by some sort of apology for not being helping to stop any of it from happening in the first place.

Mabel usually just waved these off, her eyes focused on her feet as they made their way through the trees. Every now and then, she'd cast a glance back at Dipper and offer him a small smile. Dipper, eyes still red and puffy, nose still running, would smile back.

Every now and then, Dipper would spot something moving between the trees beside them. He didn't mention it, not wanting to startle Mabel or Pacifica, but he kept an eye on it, careful not to let it meld into the shadows and out of his line of sight. He wasn't all to worried himself, he had an idea of what it was. He remembered the shadow that'd leapt from the trees, taking down the pterodactyls, one by one.

This shadow was different from the one he'd seen after he and Mabel fell. That one had felt much more...menacing. Not to mention, it'd been _floating_ , through the air. It might have been something that came through the deteriorating barriers between dimensions, it might have just been a trick of the light. Still, Dipper had only seen one other creature float like that. The thought of it sent shivers down his spine.

By the time they'd made it back to the Shack, Dipper couldn't take it anymore. He let Pacifica lead Mabel inside, the blonde fussing about her like some sort of nurse. He charged for the edge of the tree line, hauling a rather disgruntled-looking Bill out from the protection of the shadows and towards the front porch. The demon's hair shone in the sunlight, the same color as the flash of gold Dipper had seen earlier. He was covered in blood.

"What are you doing back here?" Dipper hissed, letting go of Bill. "I told you to _leave_."

"I told you before, Pine Tree," Bill said, distracted with straightening his red-stained shirt. "You can't get rid of me that easily."

Dipper had to shut his eyes for a moment, restraining himself from strangling Bill right then and there. "You don't seem to understand," he ground out. "I don't want you here. When I told you to leave, I meant it."

"Right," Bill said. He pulled his gloves (which were miraculously clean) from his back pocket and began tugging them on. "And now I'm back."

"This isn't a joke, Bill!" Dipper yelled. Frustration and anger turned in a whirlwind inside him. To keep seeing that same damned face over and over again, that same golden eye flashing at him when he though he'd never have to see it again, it was driving him insane. "I told you to go, which means you go. And you stay gone. I told you, I'm done with your games!"

Bill's face flashed from calm to angry in the space of about half a millisecond. His face was suddenly less than an inch from Dipper's, a snarl warping his features. "I have done more to protect you and your sister than you will ever know."

Dipper scoffed. "I seriously doubt that."

"I've saved your _life_ , kid!" Bill hissed. "I've _protected_ you!"

"You've made my life miserable."

"I've done more than you think."

Bill then hefted something large and heavy that had been looped around his belt. It landed with a wet and heavy _THWUMP_ on the wooden boards of the porch. Dipper was surprised he hadn't noticed it before, but he stared in wide-eyed disbelief at the severed claws of at least four pterodactyls.

That was all of them— _all_ of them. One or two was one thing, but taking down _all_ four pterodactyls? That was insane.

"Does this look like I'm trying to 'destroy you'?" Bill asked calmly.

Dipper had to swallow the lump in his throat, unable to tear his eyes away from the gory sight.

After a moment, Bill sighed. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go take a shower and get back to my lovely little lizard companion, Miss Sophia. We're in the middle of a discussion concerning the effects of fighter pilots during World War One. Unless," he paused, shooting a glance at Dipper, "you want to kick out the person that just saved your town from being obliterated by dinosaurs."

Dipper finally managed to pull his eyes away from the claws the shock of it still ricocheting up and down his spine. "I thought that that's what you wanted?"

Bill let out a small laugh. "Ah, now I know you weren't listening, Pine Tree. I wanted to terrorize the city. _Terrorize_ it, not destroy it. You see, I'm not that kind of person."

"You're not even a person," Dipper bit back.

"Thank you," Bill said with a smile. He climbed the porch's steps, heading for the front door. Dipper didn't stop him.

"Hey," Dipper called after him. "What happened to the T-rex?"

"He and I had a lovely tea party!" Bill shouted back over his shoulder with a wave of his hand.

* * *

 

"Hey, what's going on with you and Bill?"

Dipper nearly jumped out of his skin, Mabel having come out of seemingly nowhere. Or maybe he just hadn't been paying any attention. He'd been sitting on the couch in the living room, staring at the television, but not really seeing it. Bill was sitting in the entryway, just out of earshot, attempting to teach Waddles the complicated dynamics of chess.

It'd been a week since the dinosaur attack. Rescue squads had already been dispatched—only to find that there had no one that needed rescuing, thanks to Bill. The fire department had managed to clear most of the debris caused by the jurassic destroyers. They'd dug massive graves for the corpses of the pterodactyls after allowing Dipper to collect a few samples. They never could find the T-rex.

Pacifica had insisted on staying over the last few nights, just to make sure Mabel was _really_ fine. They'd taken Mabel to see a doctor as soon as they'd made it back to the Shack, only to find that everything was in working order. Not even a broken bone. The doctor had called it a miracle after hearing what had happened.

Mabel and Dipper had simply explained Bill off as a cousin that was visiting for a while. Not that Pacifica seemed to care much. She'd spent most of her time locked away in Mabel's room with Mabel, the two of them sparking off the start what Dipper was sure to be an annoying friendship. They'd only just managed to convince Pacifica to go back to her hotel yesterday.

The air between Bill and Dipper since then had been...strained to say the least. Dipper had never told Mabel about kicking Bill out, so she was none the wiser. Dipper had found no other choice other than to begrudgingly let Bill stay. After all, it was like he said: the town would most likely be in ruins now if it weren't for him.

Dipper was still trying to figure out what Bill's deal was. Risking his life to save a town of people he hated? That may have been Dipper's thing, but that just didn't sound like Bill. Not to mention, that damned nuisance just kept coming back. No matter how many fights they got into. No matter how many times Dipper told him to leave, Bill just wouldn't stay gone. There was just no logical explanation behind it.

Unless...Bill was telling the truth. That all he wanted was to get his old body back. Dipper shook his head. No, that was too simple. Bill was a being of pure destruction and madness, he always had ulterior motives.

Dipper glanced towards the entryway. He could just see half of Bill, his blonde mop of hair pushed to one side, his eye glinting in the light like a coin. He could smile naturally now, so that he looked relatively human every time he flashed his teeth. And maybe that was it. Maybe Bill was just becoming more...human. It would make sense, being trapped in a human body and all. Whatever it was, Dipper couldn't help but think that Bill had...mellowed out somewhat over the last few weeks (if taking down four fully grown pterodactyls and a T-rex on his own could be considered "mellow"). At the very least, he hadn't tried to kill anyone in a while.

Dipper let out a sigh and looked back to Mabel.

"Nothing," he said. "We—We just got into a fight. Nothing new."

Mabel adjusted herself on the couch to face him better. "Well is it something you guys can fix?"

"What?"

"You know," she shrugged. "Is it something you two can work out?"

"Wait a minute," Dipper said, throwing his hands up. "Let's back track here: I thought you hated Bill."

Mabel shrugged again, her lips pursed. "Well, yeah. But it looks like he's here to stay, and to be honest, I'd rather not have the super-powered dorito demon that lives on our couch be mad at us."

Dipper looked back towards Bill. Was it even possible for a demon to gain some sort of humanity? He guessed there was only one way to find out.

Dipper rubbed a hand over his face and nodded. "Yeah, okay, I'll take care of it."

* * *

 

"Hey, Bill."

Dipper stood in the doorway to the living room, looking only slightly awkward as Bill reclined on the couch.

Bill glanced up from carefully sewing together a frankenstein plushie of different parts he'd torn off of a collection of stuffed animals he'd stollen from Mabel's room. The screaming match that had resulted once she'd found out had shook every window pane in the house, and she'd shattered quite a few plates that had connected with the wall after aiming for Bill's head.

"Why hello, Pine Tree," Bill said, sounding disinterested as he went back to his sewing project. "Is there something else you'd like to yell at me for? Perhaps I looked at the drapes with a bit too much malice? Or I walked with too much confidence in my step?"

Dipper shifted his feet. He had to swallow the lump in his throat before speaking. "Ah, no. I was wondering if you wanted to take a look at the research in my room..." His sentence petered off, sounding incredibly lame.

For a moment there was nothing but silence. Dipper ducked his head, doing his best to avoid looking at Bill.

Then there came just a very quiet, "Oh."

Then more silence. Dipper continued to fidget at the entryway to the living room. He felt just just like he had when he'd let Mabel convince him to ask out Jonny Mathensen in the ninth grade. He hated this. He hated admitting he was wrong.

"Well, I mean," Bill said, finally breaking the silence, "if you're sure. I could stab you in the back with your own pencil, you know—"

"Say yes, or I'm going to change my mind," Dipper said, finally looking up.

Bill looked at him for a moment before a grin leapt to his face, one of those warm, human grins he'd been getting better at. He set aside his macabre sewing project and got up, following Dipper back to his room and the absolute library-sized collection of notes Dipper had collected over the years.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we're getting to the good stuff ;)


	11. Place Your Hand on My Beating Heart

Dipper woke to the warm feeling of sunlight on his face. Warmth surrounded him in a cocoon—but not the sticky kind of warm that usually came in the summer, the kind that had you waking in a mess, convinced that you were dying and desperate to throw all the covers off. No, this was the kind of warm that came from lazy naps on a warm afternoon, a book laying open in front of you. In other words, he was terribly, horribly, awfully comfortable.

Dipper let out a groan, unwilling to open his eyes just yet, and shifted, hoping to just roll over and go to sleep. But to his surprise, he couldn't. There was a pressure on his shoulder, something warm and heavy. He had a flash of memory of when he and Mabel used to fall asleep on car rides together, their heads propped up on one another.

A groan came from the warm, heavy, and terribly comfortable weight on his shoulder and Dipper blinked his eyes open. As soon as the sleepy bleariness cleared away from his eyes and he realized what he was seeing, Dipper went very, very still.

Bill Cipher, destructive, soul-stealing dream demon trapped in a human body, was passed out, leaning against Dipper like a pillow as Dipper sat propped sitting up against the wall. Bill was still asleep, his long lashes fluttering over a closed eye, his cheeks slightly flushed from the warmth of the morning sun streaming in through Dipper's window. One cheek was pressed to Dipper's shoulder, looking puffy.

_Oh, my God._

They'd fallen _asleep_ together.

_Oh, God, please. No, no, no._

Dipper Pines and Bill-fucking-Cipher, had fallen asleep together in Dipper's goddamned bed.

 _Nononononononononono_.

Dipper was suddenly very wide awake, his heart racing in his throat. _How did this happen???_ Realization hit Dipper like a blow to the stomach. The last few nights, he and Bill had stayed up late into the night in Dipper's room, pouring over his notes and cranking out hour after hour of research. Usually Bill left around three in the morning to sleep on his couch as Dipper dozed off in his bed. Dipper silently cursed himself. Whatever had happened last night, Bill sure as hell didn't leave.

Moving very carefully, Dipper tried to slip out from underneath Bill, only to have the demon tilt forward, his head falling into Dipper's lap, never once waking up. Dipper felt himself flush all the way from his toes to his ears. _Oh, God, this can_ not _be happening_. Bill let out a little murmur and turned his head, burying his nose in Dipper's crotch. Dipper let out the most terrified squeak he'd ever heard in his entire life.

Dipper had just about been ready to say the hell with it and shove Bill onto the floor, when he heard a very distinct, very recognizable 'click.' His head snapping up, Dipper saw none other than his traitorous twin sister standing in his open doorway, her phone aimed at them and the biggest grin on her face.

" _Mabel!_ " Dipper shrieked. He was on his feet in a second, unceremoniously knocking Bill to the floor.

Bill hit the floor with a dull _thud!_ and let out a garbled sound. "Wazzat?"

Mabel bolted, giggling hysterically as Dipper chased her through the house. " _Delete that picture!_ "

* * *

 

Mabel grinned at her phone at the kitchen table, tapping at the screen and giggling every now and then. "Oh, this is the best blackmail I've had in a long time, little brother."

Dipper made a listless grab for the phone, but she danced out of his reach. He let out a tired groan and slumped forward on the table. "Mabel, please, delete it."

"Oh, no," she said. "Remember tenth grade and Dona-Luise? Well, guess what, it's payback time."

Dipper let out another groan into the table.

"Oh, come on, you two are cute," she said before snorting and breaking down into a fit of laughter.

Bill walked into the room, which only lead to Mabel laughing harder, nearly doubled over in her seat. Dipper turned his head so that his cheek pressed against the grain as he glared at Bill, who was looking rather scruffy looking, his hair in a disarrayed bedhead, and his eye still half-closed from sleep.

He gave Mabel, who was only just now coming down from her hysterics, a rather confused look before deciding to shrug it off and let out a walrus of a yawn. Mabel was finally wiping the tears from her eyes as Bill sat down in the remaining kitchen chair.

"Nice to see you two slept well," he grumbled, reaching for Mabel's cup of coffee.

Within a second, Mabel snatched her breakfast knife and slammed the butt of it into the table, the sharp point right beneath Bill's hand. Bill froze.

"Unless you want to lose a digit," Mabel flashed him a grin that held no warmth. "I suggest you keep your gross demon hands to yourself."

Bill's eyebrows rose, but he didn't say anything, silently taking his hand back.

Mabel got up, bringing her dishes to the sink as Dipper continued to lay on the table.

Bill rolled his head on his neck and let out a groan. "I don't know about you, Pine Tree, but I slept on my neck the weirdest way last night."

Dipper shot him a glare. "Shut up."

Bill laughed.

There came a clattering as Mabel starting putting away her plates and Dipper looked to find that she was already fully dressed. Her purse sat next to the kitchen table.

"Where are you going?" Dipper asked, his head perking up the slightest.

"Pacifica and I are going shopping," she said as she continued to put away plates. "I need more running clothes and she wanted to," Mabel's words teetered off. She gave a shrug. "Catch up," she finished.

"Catch up?" Dipper asked. "Mabel, she practically lived here all last week. What could you two possibly have to catch up on?"

"Come on, Dipper," Mabel said, spinning to face him. "She just got back to Gravity Falls, it's not like she has a lot of friends here."

"So what?" Dipper asked. "You have to be her only friend?"

Mabel raised her eyebrows. "You jealous, bro-bro?"

Dipper rolled his eyes. "As if. I'm just saying it's a little weird that Pacifica's gone from our mortal enemy—"

"I take offense to that," Bill chimed.

Dipper ignored him. "To practically a live-in."

Mabel shrugged. "Maybe if she had a house to live in, she'd spend more time there."

Dipper let out a groan. "Mabel, come on, you cannot blame that on me. You're the one that took the job."

"All right, all right, fine," she said, throwing her hands up in surrender. "I'll help you work on it tomorrow. Have you heard from Stan yet about what might be still trapped in the manor?"

Dipper shook his head. "Not a word. I keep calling, sending e-mails. No response. It's like he's avoiding us. You think you might be able to help us out with some research later on?"

Mabel shook her head and went to pick up her purse. "No can do, bro-naroni. Pacifica and I are going to be gone most of today."

"Mabel," Dipper whined. "Then what am I supposed to do today?"

"Not my problem," Mabel said, ruffling his hair on her way out of the kitchen. "Spend it with your sleeping buddy!"

Dipper let out a huff as he heard the front door slam shut and sunk further into his chair. He looked up to find Bill had already stollen his chocolate-chip pancakes that Mabel had made that morning. Bill looked at him, grinning with chocolate smeared all across his face. "Hey, there, sleeping buddy."

Dipper gave a disgusted snort.

* * *

 

Dipper's flashlight swept over the craggy tunnel walls and ceilings. The bare rock stared back at him, looking grey and gloomy. He and Bill had managed to find the destroyed church in the middle of the woods from ten years ago. The one Dipper and Mabel and Soos and Stan and everyone had found the tunnel in, the one that lead to a cavern of million-year-old dinosaurs trapped in tree sap.

Bill and Dipper had managed to pick their way through the old church ruins and into the tunnel below that lead to the cavern. After Mabel had left, Dipper had downed a few cups of coffee, gotten dressed, and then dragged a whining and bemoaning Bill out to make sure that no other dinosaurs had escaped. ("You are going to be a productive member of society today and you will like it." "I will _not_!")

They were making their way down the tunnel, Dipper's flashlight sweeping left and right. It was old. The floor slicked with slime and the tunnel walls covered in grime. They'd startled a horde of sleeping bats earlier on, which nearly scared the piss out of Dipper, but Bill simply cackled and raised his arms in the middle of tunnel as the bats streamed by, declaring himself Batman. The rest of their walk had been mostly in silence, which wasn't bad. At least it meant they weren't arguing.

When they reached the cavern, Dipper let out a low whistle, his flashlight sweeping over towering statues of ancient dinosaurs trapped in golden sap.

"Yeah, I know," Bill snorted. "They'd make a great army. It's a pity, really."

"Don't even think about it," Dipper said, aiming a look at Bill.

"Please, Pine Tree," Bill said with a roll of his eyes. "Give a guy some faith."

Dipper let out a sigh, bouncing his flashlight from one dinosaur form to the next, counting them, one by one. Just like before, the sap had been melting, only this time everything was a bit closer to being completely thawed. A triceratops winked at them, its beak twitching as it sniffed at the air, its mouth still glued shut by sap. A velociraptor cawed, its teeth gnashing and leg spasming, though most of its upper torso were still held in place.

"Well," Dipper said. "It looks like they're all here, the question is, how do we make sure they don't get out?"

"Leave that," Bill said, carefully pulling off his gloves, one finger at a time, "to me."

An involuntary shiver suddenly jolted down Dipper's spine. He paused then, confusion washing over him. What was that? Dipper glanced at Bill, who looked like he hadn't noticed anything and was instead inspecting a very sharp kitchen knife. (Where the heck had he gotten _that_? _Note to self_ , Dipper thought. _Lock away all the knives when we get home_.) Dipper's thoughts raced back to what Bill had just said, the way his voice had dipped low and gravely, the way he'd spoken with such confidence and command. Another shiver raced down Dipper's spine.

He blinked, his face flushing. _What the **hell**?_

"Pine Tree."

Dipper nearly jumped out of his skin, whirring to face Bill. "Wha?"

Bill raised a curious eyebrow. "Your blowtorch. Can I borrow it?"

Dipper glanced down to see Bill's hand outstretched, those long, delicate fingers splayed out like a spider's web. Dipper swallowed the lump in his throat. _What the hell was wrong with him?_

"Uh, um, I mean, yeah, sure." Dipper fumbled to open his backpack, pulling out a small, hand-held blowtorch. He hesitated only slightly before handing it over to Bill.

Bill traded his gloves for the torch, tucking both it and the knife into his belt.

"Bill," Dipper started. "What are you—?"

Without warning, Bill seized an outcrop of tree sap and hoisted himself up. Dipper watched in wide eyed disbelief as Bill free climbed the entire chunk of tree sap until he sat astride it like a horse, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Then using the blow torch, Bill melted a tunnel to the stegosaurus's eye. He raised his knife, ready to strike, when Dipper's heart leapt into his throat.

"Wait!"

Bill paused, looking up at Dipper.

"You don't have to kill it," Dipper said. "Stegosauruses are plant eaters, they're not going to hurt anyone."

Bill let out an exasperated sigh. "Like having a twelve ton dinosaur rampaging through the town's streets, plowing through buildings and trampling people isn't going to hurt anyone?"

Dipper hesitated. Bill had a point. "Maybe we can send it somewhere."

"So people can experiment on it? Or clone it to actually make an army? Actually, that's not half a bad idea—"

"All right, all right," Dipper sighed. "I get it. Just...be gentle."

Bill smirked. "Gentle's my middle name, Pine Tree."

Bill raised the knife again. Dipper shut his eyes. The stegosaurus never had a chance.

It went on like that for the next couple of hours, with Bill climbing the sap, blowtorching his way to a weak spot, and then ending it. Dipper couldn't watch. Every time he heard the knife fall, he winced. There were just all these ancient, beautiful creatures, killed before they were even given a chance. But he knew Bill was right. If they let the dinosaurs go and the wrong people got ahold of them, then that could spell bad news. Jurassic Park, live.

When Bill finished, he came to get Dipper, tucked away in his corner, making him jump. Dipper felt a terrible ache in is heart when he stood and looked around the cavern. Anything that had been moving before was still. Blood leaked from the chunks of tree sap, and Dipper felt an awful emptiness in his chest. It was just so sad. So many dinosaurs, real dinosaurs, dead.

Bill was the one to lead them back to the tunnel and towards the geyser that would bring them to the surface. Dipper kept his eyes trained on his sneakers. He felt a tug in his chest, like something was pulling him back towards the cavern filled with dead dinosaurs, but he ignored it.

The flashlight kept jumping over the uneven tunnel walls, Bill seeming incapable of keeping it steady. Shadows danced at the edges of Dipper's vision, making him think he was seeing things. More than once, he swore he actually saw something short, fat, and with a pointy head scuttle across the tunnel's floor and out of sight, but when he looked, nothing was there.

They were nearly to the entrance in the church, when Dipper tripped over something—or rather something tripped him. Dipper fell forward, his stomach shooting into his chest. He braced himself to hit the stone floor hard, but instead, he ended up falling into a chest. A pair of arms wrapped around him, steadying him. Bill had caught him.

"Woah, there, Pine Tree," he chuckled. "A bit early to be hitting the booze, don't you think?"

Dipper's heart fluttered against his ribs. Bill smelled like cinnamon and campfire smoke. Had he smelled like that this morning?

"I'm, um, I'm fine," Dipper muttered, pushing himself away from Bill quickly. "Just thought I saw something."

Bill let him stand, but he kept his hands on Dipper's shoulders. They were strong, comforting somehow. He quirked an eyebrow. "You sure?"

Dipper shook his head. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Bill didn't look convinced, but he gave an unconcerned shrug anyways. "Okay. Whatever you say, Short Stack." He let go of Dipper.

Inexplicably, Dipper suddenly felt very cold. The warmth was gone. He felt stupid, but he missed the feeling of Bill's hands on his shoulders. Heat raced up Dipper's face to the tips of his ears when he realized what he was thinking. _Stupid, stupid, stupid. What's wrong with you_? He quickly ducked his head and covered his mouth with his hand, following Bill the rest of the way out of the tunnel.

 

When they reached the surface, the two of them had to help each other pick their way through the wreckage of the old church. Dipper had to help Bill get a leg up in a few places, while Bill kept Dipper steady in others, both working together. As they moved towards the edge of the wreckage, a feeling of being watch settled in Dipper's chest. He could hear things moving among the church debris that wasn't caused by either him, nor Bill. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Something wasn't right.

By the time they made it out of what was left of the church, the sun was already starting towards the Eastern horizon. Bill started for the tree line, but Dipper seized his arm, pulling him back. Bill was about to say something that was no doubt going to be rude and ungrateful, when he looked back at the woods. The words died in his throat.

The late hour cast long shadows among the trees, a spiderweb of darkness settling over the branches like a shroud.

Dipper's grip on Bill's arm tightened, his heart thundering horribly loud in his chest.

"Holy shit," Bill breathed, still unable to tear his eyes away from the edge of the woods.

Hidden among the trees, buried in darkness and shadows, were a million sets of glittering eyes looking back at them. They were tiny, small, and hard, like black marbles when the sun hit them just right, and they were everywhere. In the trees, the bushes, littering the ground.

Dipper forced the lump in his throat down. Moving very slowly, Bill reached around and pulled the knife and blowtorch from his belt, holding them in front of him at the ready. Dipper carefully reached back, sliding the sawed-off shotgun from his backpack, aiming the muzzle at the tree line.

"What are these things, Pine Tree," Bill asked under his breath.

Dipper could hear the hitch in his voice. It took a lot to scare a dream demon. They were so, so screwed.

His eyes were flitting from tree to tree, scrambling to come up with an exit strategy, when Dipper caught sight of something. The light had shifted just slightly, allowing him to just make out a stout, pudgy form and a wild beard.

Dipper narrowed his eyes, taking a small step forward.

"Pine Tree," Bill warned.

Dipper's blood was roaring in his ears and the day's light was dying fast, but he knew that figure. He recognized it.

"Shmebulock?" Dipper asked in faint disbelief. More shadows became defined as he eyes adjusted. The forms of hundreds of gnomes greeted him from the forest. Granted, they were definitely a better sight than, say, a hundred hellhounds, but still, what were they all doing here? He lowered his shotgun an inch and took another step forward.

"Pine Tree!" Bill warned again, his tone urgent.

"No, it's okay, Bill, I know these guys—"

Dipper froze. A number of the gnomes had taken steps towards them, allowing him to get a better look at them. But here's the thing, they weren't gnomes. At least, not the gnomes Dipper had known. They were the gnomes, yes, with Shmebulock, and Jeff, and Carson, and Steve, but at the same time, they weren't. Their beards had overgrown, looking unwashed and scraggly. Their eyes were hard, like stone, and their faces were set in a snarl, showing pointed, yellow teeth. Some had dried blood matted in their hair, others had crumpled hats, or were missing their hats all together. They looked feral. They looked wild.

He felt as Bill's hand slipped in to his, and gripped it tight.

"Pine Tree," he heard Bill say from behind him. " _Run_."

Dipper ran.

He turned on his heal and bolted after Bill, who was headed towards a small break in the line of gnomes along the tree line. In the next instant, the gnomes charged, raging, foaming at the mouth, bounding over the ground like rabid animals. Dipper could hear them snarling as Bill pulled him by his hand through the woods.

They were short, so they didn't have the best speed, but still, a raging animal could push itself to the limits. Gnomes fell from treetops like horrible, murderous squirrels, swarming after them like a tidal wave. They clawed at Dipper's heals, snorting and howling, nothing but rage in their beady little eyes. Dipper smacked them away, swinging his shotgun like a bat. Every now and then, Bill would set off his torch, not burning any of them, but simply forcing the little gremlins to scatter.

They ran for the Shack, weaving in and out between the trees, desperate to gain ground. Dipper's lungs burned and his legs ached, but Bill continued to drag him along.

Eventually, Dipper saw a break in the trees, a flash of light that was unmistakably car headlights. The Shack. Pacifica and Mabel must have made it back. Bill and Dipper continued to sprint through the trees. They were nearly there when a gnome flew at Dipper from his left, seemingly out of nowhere. The little devil sunk his tiny teeth into Dipper's neck, ripping his head back and forth. Dipper let out a yelp and fell, his hand slipping out of Bill's.

For a crazy moment, Dipper thought Bill was just going to leave him there. But then a burst of fire lit up the side of his face, scorching the gnome. The creature fell off and bolted into the woods, squealing.

"Come on, Pine Tree," Bill panted, hauling Dipper to his feet again. "Almost there."

The two broke through the tree line surrounding the Shack just as Mabel and Pacifica were climbing out of Mabel's car. They'd been looking towards the forest, no doubt concerned by the sounds of wild yelping and snarling. Shock hit Mabel's face as soon as she saw them stumble from between the trees.

"Inside!" Bill screamed. "Everyone inside, _now_!"

They didn't need to be told twice. Both of the girls turned tail and bolted straight for the Shack's front door, Dipper and Bill right on their heals. Bill hauled Dipper up the steps as the gnomes surged from the woods in a flood of flying spittle and pointed hats.

Mabel managed to unlock the front door and flung it open. She and Pacifica were through in less than a second. The gnomes were spilling over each other up the front steps as Bill hauled Dipper inside. They slammed the door shut just as the gnomes reached them. They slammed into the door with a horrendous force, causing the wood around the hinges to splinter.

Bill slammed his shoulder against the door to brace it.

"Pine Tree! Help me!"

Dipper's neck was throbbing, and blood soaked his shirt from the bite wound, but he was next to Bill in an instant, bracing his shoulder against the door against the surging mass outside. Dipper screamed against the incredible pressure from outside, both he and Bill holding the door against the gnomes.

 

Dipper blinked his eyes open to sunlight streaming in through the triangle window of his childhood bedroom. Sleep pulled at him like a wet blanket, but he forced his eyes open. Dust motes swirled through the beam of sunlight shining on the attic's hardwood floor.

He was swaddled in blankets on the floor of the room at the foot of Mabel's bed.

There came a sleepy murmur from above an Dipper could see a mess of blonde hair tangling together with auburn. Pacifica and Mabel shifted under the covers in their sleep.

The gnomes from last night had gone away somewhere around midnight, scampering back into the woods on their own. Dipper wasn't sure what had caused them to flee, nor what had caused the to attack in the first place, and he wasn't entire sure that he wanted to know, either.

It was then that he recognized a familiar warm feeling he'd woken up to before. He turned to find himself face-to-face with a sleeping dream demon, the sun shining on his face making him look as harmless as a child. They were bundled up together, wrapped in the same blankets like eskimos cuddling for warmth.

But Dipper couldn't bring himself to care. He was warm. They were safe. Everything was fine.

Dipper drifted back to sleep, surrounded by the warmth of Bill Cipher.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cackling in the distance*


	12. Hold Me Down

"Ready to detonate, in three, two, one."

The explosion was horrendous. It rocked the ground beneath Dipper's feet, nearly knocking him over. Mabel _did_ fall over, her glitter-encrusted hard hat flying from her head. Pacifica had to help him pick her back up.

"Wow," Mabel said, jamming her hat back on her head backwards as she staggered to her feet. Her eyes were wide, staring at the crater that used to be the Northwest manor's pool house. A giggle bubbled up from her. "That was incredible!" she shrieked, jumping up and down and wrapping her arms around Pacifica.

"Come on, Mabel," Dipper said as he was already making his way towards the demolition site—well, what was left of it, anyways. "You've set explosions yourself before. Remember the ogre?"

"This can't be anything new to you, Shooting Star."

Dipper nearly jumped right out of his skin as a tall, lanky figure seemed to drop out of nowhere, landing right next to him.

"Jesus Christ, Bill," Dipper said, stumbling back a few steps.

"Hmm," Bill said with a smug little grin. "Close, Pine Tree, but I think I'm a bit closer to the other one."

Dipper scowled. Leaves continued to float down between the both of them from the upset of Bill's tree-jumping. Safety procedure dictated that they all be a specific number of yards from the blow site, but Bill had wanted a better look, climbing to the tallest tree he could find—which wasn't that hard, honestly. The Northwest property had been overrun by trees and scrub and weeds over the last few years of neglect. And now that said demolition was officially over, Bill had apparently found it appropriate to skitter between tree branches like a squirrel and drop down practically on top of Dipper.

Dipper shoved past Bill and towards the smoldering wreckage that was the pool house. The pool house had actually been Pacifica's idea, believe it or not. Apparently, since she was planning on renovating the entire property anyways, she didn't mind rebuilding a pool house or two. Mabel had thought of the explosives, not that that was a surprise. But Bill had been the one to come up with the strategy to round up all the monsters that had been left inside the Northwest Manor to rot and herd them into said pool house.

The original plan, of course, belonged to Dipper. He and Bill had spent the last few weeks near to scratching their brains out between investigating the increasing weirdness of Gravity Falls _and_ trying to find a way to exterminate the Northwest Manor. Despite their constant calls to their one remaining great uncle, neither had received any kind of response on how to handle the monsters still trapped inside the mansion. Eventually, they realized no matter how much she insisted it was fine, Pacifica could not live in a hotel forever and came up with a plan to lure all the monsters out of the manor and into the pool house nearby, it's base ringed with enough explosives to blow a crater in the Earth—something they were only able to do thanks to city approval and the careful watch of ambulances and the fire department

It was a pity, really. Dipper would've loved to have learned more about the mysterious creatures his great uncles had sent back from the depths of the sea. But as it were, Dipper had no idea what they were facing, whether or not they could be tamed, or how to even subdue them. Simply chasing them out of the manor was out of the question since they couldn't risk them wrecking havoc on the town. Their last resort had been total annihilation.

Mabel hurried after Dipper as he neared the blast cite and started to climb down into what was left of the pool house. If he was going to snatch any specimens to examine, it'd have to be now, before the firemen posed at a perimeter around the manor property lines could come in and hose everything down.

"Of course I remember the ogre," she said as Dipper was already picking his way past debris, trying to find a safe path down the slope of the crater. God, he thought. The ogre incident felt like years ago. As it was, They were nearing the end of June. It'd barely been three months since the ogre attack.

"But I've never seen one that _big_ before," Mabel squealed in glee. She'd made it to the edge of the crater and was helping Pacifica keep her footing as they both made their way down after Dipper.

Dipper nearly jumped out of his skin a second time that day as Bill whizzed by him, sliding down the ash-strewn slope like a skater might a concrete pool. Almost immediately, the nuisance of a demon found the charred and ashen head of some beast, skin falling off in blackened chunks to reveal a yellow-ish skull beneath. He held it up and started reciting Hamlet, but changing the words so that it was more of a modern rap than the original verses, thrusting the grotesque thing in Dipper's face as soon as he reached the bottom of the crater. Dipper shoved the decapitated head away, and Bill cackled, spinning in another direction before waltzing around the burned area, using the skull as his dance partner.

"Oh, gross," Pacifica said, both she and Mabel having finally caught up to Dipper. "You sure your cousin doesn't belong in that Morningside Asylum?"

"Morningside's a hospital, Paz, not an asylum" Mabel said, flicking a finger at Pacifica's purple hard hat.

Pacifica wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, but it's full of crazy people."

"It's full of _sick_ people," Dipper said, a pang hitting his heart when he thought about McGucket in the Northwest Manor, spewing nonsense as his eyes were wide with insanity. "They just need a little help is all."

"Besides," Mabel said, flinging an arm around Pacifica's shoulders. "Those poor patients deserve better than to have—"

There came a retching sound and all three looked to find Bill spitting and hacking. Apparently, he'd tried to kiss the monster corpse head.

Mabel grimaced. "Well, than to have _that_ as a roommate."

Dipper looked to find Pacifica's face had gone green watching Bill. He couldn't really blame her.

Since Pacifica had seen Bill the day the dinosaurs attacked nearly three weeks ago, the twins couldn't really get away with hiding Bill from her anymore. But rather telling her that he was the same trans-dimensional dream demon that had nearly destroyed Gravity Falls and caused her family and her family name ruin ten years ago trapped in a human body by their now dead great uncle Ford, they simply said that Bill was their cousin, Will. Will was from Wisconsin and was visiting them for an indeterminate amount of time.

Suffice it to say, even without knowing Bill's true identity, Pacifica seemed to like the demon about as much as Mabel—which was to say, she didn't like him very much at all.

"You're turn, Pine Tree!" Bill's voice snapped Dipper out of his revere just in time for the demon to grab him about the waist and start to spin him in another waltz through the pool house rubble.

Dipper stumbled, nearly falling flat on his face as he was pulled after Bill.

"Gah, Bill!"

"Ah, ah, Pine Tree. You must follow my lead, otherwise how else will the ladies at court know you're so refined?"

Dipper tried to pull away, but Bill caught him around the waist, digging his finger's into Dipper's side and wriggling them. Dipper let out a shriek of laughter and tried to wrestle the demon off him, causing the both of them to fall into a heap, rolling through the ashes in a mess of wrestling and laughter.

Dipper finally managed to shove Bill away with a hand to the face, the both of them still laughing and now covered in soot.

Ever since the incident with the gnomes, Dipper and Bill had been on...tolerable terms to say the least. Dipper didn't think Bill was trying to kill them or ruin him or Mabel any more, but that still didn't mean he trusted the demon. Sure, he and Bill stayed up most nights until into the early morning, researching and discussing what could be happening to Gravity Falls. With the dinosaurs and the gnomes and everything else that had been going on, the anomalies kept piling up, and they still had no clue was to where they were coming from or why. Bill's insight to other dimensions was helpful, but even he hadn't a clue as to what could be causing them.

There'd only been one or two more instances where Dipper had woken to a demon asleep in his bed, the both of them having lost the battle with sleep, notes still spread across their laps. Those mornings usually ended up with Dipper shoving Bill unceremoniously off the bed and onto the floor, where the demon was more than content to stay and sleep until noon. Other nights, Bill left to sleep on the couch like usual, or when they were both especially tired, Dipper would let the demon curl up in a corner of his room in a sleeping bag.

Arguments and screaming matches were still common, especially between Bill and Mabel, though usually the three of them could find a way to reign it back in without anyone being kicked out of the house. Bill hadn't drawn a knife on anyone since McGucket, which was a blessing to say the least. Still, that didn't mean they were friends. If anything, Dipper kept a more wary eye on Bill than ever. He constantly watched Bill. He might even say that he knew Bill better than anyone else by now. He knew the way the demon's eye glittered when the sun hit it just right, knew how brown Bill's already dark skin could get if he stayed out in the sun too long. He could tell the difference immediately between Bill wearing make-up and going without. He could trace the outlines of Bill's bedhead whenever he woke up every morning by memory. He could tell the difference between's Bill's laughs, which were fake and which were genuine—and the demon did have genuine laughs, believe it or not. Bill laughed loudest when the lion got the zebra on the discovery channel, or when Dipper's pens exploded in his mouth, or when the demon accidentally nicked himself with a knife and blood ran over his palm, or when Dipper said something embarrassing on accident and felt his face go pink, or when Dipper woke up with a particular unruly cow-lick that stuck straight up like Alfalfa, or when Dipper—actually, now that he thought about it, most of the time Dipper saw Bill laugh, it was because of something Dipper did. The thought made Dipper's face heat up. Great. That probably meant Bill thought he was an even bigger useless screw-up than before.

Thinking of this, Dipper scowled as he brushed himself off and shoved himself to his feet. Bill was still cackling on the ground, running streaks of soot over his face like some long ago Viking. It made him look even more deranged than usual as Dipper stalked away from him. Pacifica was toting a giggling Mabel around, piggy-back style, the rich girl's biceps flexing beneath the short sleeves of her Prada blouse.

Dipper was nearly done sorting through most of the beast remains—his heart nearly broke when he'd realized how many they'd had to kill, it was like the dinosaurs all over again—when a trio of firemen came to the edge of the crater and ushered them all out, Dipper hastily zipping up his backpack with his specimens before slinging it over his shoulder. Pacifica lead them to the gate to the property before she said her farewells. She stayed behind as they left for the Shack, which was only a short walk away. The contractors and the rebuilders were to show up not long after the scheduled demolition of the pool house. Now that her old family home had been liberated, Pacifica wanted to start work immediately.

They were nearly to Dipper's rust-red truck parked just a little outside the Northwest gate, when Dipper froze, a jolting, tingling sensation trickling down his neck. Someone was watching them. He barely registered as Mabel called shotgun and she and Bill clambered into the cab of the truck. He turned, dread pooling in his stomach. The Northwest Manor sat at the top of a small plateau, surrounded on all sides by shallow, cliff-like drop-offs. Beyond the edge of the property, the manor was surrounded by a thick forest of evergreens, almost as dense as the woods that surrounded the Shack. The only way to the manor was the road that cut through the forest and up the steep rise to the property.

Dipper scanned the woods surrounding the manor, seeing nothing but trees, their shadows as dark and foreboding as anything. He remembered the first night he'd been to the manor, the night when the lumberjack ghost had woken and nearly destroyed them all. Maybe these woods were filled with even more ghosts, watching them, biding their time as they waited for the right moment to rise up and swarm the manor again.

Dipper could feel his stomach twist, accompanying the hallow feeling in his chest. He knew this feeling, he recognized it. It was the same one that he'd felt before the gnomes had attacked.

Without warning, a large, furry mass ripped from between the trees of the Northwest forest and hurtled straight for Dipper. Dipper managed to glimpse glittering white fangs and claw sharp enough to cut stone before letting out a terrified scream and bolting for the truck. He hurtled into the front seat and slammed the door shut. His hands shook as he struggled to slot the key into the ignition. He didn't even get a good look at what the creature was, but with his luck lately, he didn't have to guess if it was dangerous.

"Dipper," Mabel said, utterly bewildered. "What—"

Her words fell short with a shriek as she looked out the back window of the truck.

The ignition turned over. Dipper kicked the truck into gear. Something slammed into the back of the truck and Dipper swore before hitting the gas to the floor. The truck lurched before stumbling onto the gravel-strewn road. In seconds, they were speeding down the side of the cliff, the truck nearly rearing off the road with each sharp turn.

He could hear a roar from behind them, but when he looked in his mirrors, they were shaking too bad to see clearly. Mabel twisted around in her seat, neck craning to get a look at whatever was chasing them. Dipper could hear the _thump, thump, thump_ of heavy footfalls and he knew the creature was running.

Mabel's hand shot out to grip Dipper's forearm, her fingers squeezing so hard, it hurt.

"Dipper," Mabel said, her voice a hushed whisper.

Dipper glanced at his sister, her eyes wide as she looked out the back window.

"It's the multibear."

There came another horrendous roar from behind them. Something hit the back tire with enough to make them swerve. The right tires skidded over the side of the road and Dipper wrestled with the steering wheel to get them back up. As the truck swerved wildly, Dipper caught a glimpse of the furry creature in his review mirror. Multiple faces looked back at him, eyes red and swollen, teeth bared and frothing.

Dipper looked back to the road in time to swerve around a boulder.

"I don't understand!" Dipper screamed as Mabel gripped her seat. "Why is he chasing us?"

"It's a monster, kid," Bill's voice came from the backseat, unexpectedly calm. "It's what they do."

Dipper shook his head furiously, tears pricking at his eyes. "No," he said. "No, Mabel's right, that's the multibear. I _know_ him. He'd never do this."

Bill's head popped up from the backseat between the twins. "Where's your bag, kid?"

"Why?" Mabel asked, her voice raw. "What do you want with it?"

Bill didn't answer, just reached down and grabbed Dipper's backpack from beneath his legs, nearly jamming the break pedal. "You still carry that shotgun?" he asked.

Dipper's heart dropped into his stomach. He tried to grab for the bag, but Bill wrestled it out of his hands.

"Bill, no!"

Mabel gasped. "No! Bill, you can't hurt Multibear! He's our friend!"

Another massive blow hit the back of the truck, this time on the side of the bed. The tires squealed as they skid over rocks. They were driving along the ridge of a cliff now and the truck drifted towards the edge, open air beneath them. Dipper turned the car back onto the road.

Bill had finished rummaging through Dipper's backpack, drawing out the shortened shotgun. Dipper lunged over the back seat, seizing hold of the barrel.

"Bill, stop it!" Dipper shouted. "You can't! You can't hurt him!"

"If I don't do this, Pine Tree, he's going to kill us!" Bill screamed back.

The multibear hit them again from the back, the rear tires lifting nearly a foot in the air before crashing back down. Dipper spun the wheel as the truck's tires wheeled towards the edge of the cliff again. He watched as the trucks tires knocked rocks and pebbles over the ridge and down below.

Mabel let out a shriek as Dipper righted the truck again.

"If you don't let me do this, Shooting Star is going to die!" Bill screamed from the back seat.

Dipper glanced over his shoulder at Bill. Bill stared back at him, an unrelenting determination set in his eye. Dipper glanced back at Mabel, who was curled in the passenger seat, looking at Dipper with wide eyes. The multibear let out another roar.

Dipper looked back at Bill and let go of the shotgun.

The sound of the shotgun being racked filled the silence of the car as Dipper spun the truck's wheels, keeping them on the road.

"Dipper!" Mabel shrieked. "What are you doing! You can't let him do this!"

Dipper glanced in his review mirror to see Bill leaning out the back window of the cab, the shotgun slotted to his shoulder as he took aim. Dipper looked in his left side-mirror. The multibear was so close, he could see every one of it's faces, wild and red with fury.

" _Dipper!_ " Mabel screamed, her voice pleading.

The multibear roared. Dipper turned the wheel. Bill took the shot.

 

* * *

 

The door to the Shack banged open. Bill streaked inside, Dipper storming in right after.

"What the hell is wrong with you!"

Bill spun on his heal to glare at Dipper. He looked angry, but Dipper knew he had no right to be. He hadn't just seen his friend get shot by some demon. He hadn't nearly had his car run off the side of a cliff with his sister still inside.

"What the hell's wrong with me?" Bill screamed. "What the hell's wrong with you! I had the shot, Pine Tree! I could've taken it! But you swerved at the last second! You _made_ me miss!"

"I saw the blood, Bill," Dipper seethed. "You didn't miss."

"Yeah, well he's not dead!"

"And thank god for that!"

"No!" Bill shouted. "No! Because that just means he'll come back! He'll come back and try to kill you or Shooting Star—"

Dipper scoffed. "Since when have you cared about any of us?"

Bill's face contorted, his lips curling into a sneer, his eye burning, positively _burning_ , with rage. Dipper remembered the night he'd let Bill free, the one in the kitchen, the one where Bill had nearly killed him. All of a sudden it didn't seem so long ago. Bill stormed up to Dipper, coming so close they were nearly chest-to-chest. Dipper's first urge was to take a step back but he forced himself to hold his ground, to look up into Bill's eye and hold his gaze.

Bill glared at Dipper with so much rage, he could feel the heat radiating off he demon. When Bill spoke, his words were low and strangled, like he was trying to hold back a scream. "I have done nothing but protect you and your sister since you pulled me up from that pit beneath the ground."

Something sparked in Dipper, something deep and burning and painful. His arms snapped up and he shoved Bill back in the chest. The demon stumbled, looking stunned.

"Bullshit!" Dipper screamed. "Ever since we were kids, you've been bringing this shit to our doorstep!" Dipper's face was red, he could feel it. His eyes burned, his face burned, but he didn't care, because a deep damn of ten years of pent up rage and aggression had been broken and now all of it was flowing free over his tongue and through his teeth like wild fire and he couldn't hold it back any longer.

"For ten years, _ten years_ , Bill, you've brought the monsters to our house! The gnomes and the gremloblins and the spider people are all because of you! You bring your weirdness with you and it follows you like a curse where ever you go, and now you've brought it to us! So all of this, Bill, _all of it_ , is your fault!"

Dipper paused, heaving breaths, trying to find some sort of stability in him in the torrent of rage that was overflowing inside him. When his vision cleared, Dipper barely had time to realize what was happening before Bill charged him. They collided, Dipper's back slamming into the wall hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. Faster than Dipper could think, Bill's hands had latched over Dipper's wrists and pulled them above his head against the wall.

They were suddenly very close, closer than before, with Bill breathing his air and pressed so close to him, Dipper could feel the other's heart beat through his chest. Bill's ragged breaths fanned over Dipper's face and suddenly his senses were overwhelmed by Bill. He could smell the demon, that horribly familiar smell of cinnamon and campfire smoke. He could taste it on his tongue and he knew instantly that that's exactly what Bill would taste like. He could see nothing but that single, raging gold eye and that brown skin flushed red.

The sound of a shotgun being racked made Dipper's heart leap. Dipper's eyes flitted to the side to find Mabel. She'd followed them inside from the truck and was now standing in the living room, her feet spread and the shotgun in her hands and aimed right at Bill.

"You hurt my brother," Mabel warned. "And I'll blow your head off."

"This doesn't concern you, Shooting Star," Bill said without looking away from Dipper.

"He's my brother, which _makes_ it my concern."

Bill ignored her, still glaring down at Dipper. "You think that weirdness—all those monsters and boogeymen from the last ten years—you think that was _me_ , Pine Tree?" He asked, his voice low, barely above a whisper.

Dipper squirmed under Bill's gaze. He pulled at his wrists, but Bill's grip was firm. "Well who else could it be?" he asked. "You're the dream demon. You attract weirdness to you where ever you go."

For a moment, nothing happened. Bill and Dipper continued to breath each other's air, the pressing weight of the shotgun pointed at them still present.

And then, Bill smirked, amusement sparking in is eye. Dipper's blood ran cold.

"Oh, Pine Tree, Pine Tree, Pine Tree," Bill tutted, still in that soft, husky voice. "How blissful it must be to be so stupid."

"Bill," Mabel warned. "Step away from him."

Dipper didn't hear her his heart stuttered in his chest as he focused on Bill's words. What the hell did _that_ mean? What was going on? Why, why, _why_ was Bill smiling like that?

Then Bill leaned in close and Dipper's heart hitched into his throat as he felt Bill's lips press against his ear.

"This town's always been weird, but I'm not the one attracting all the weirdness, my poor, sweet, stupid Pine Tree. I never was," Bill whispered in his ear. "You see, the one that brings all the boogeymen to your front door as it were, the one that's been luring them in for all these years, attracting them so that they chased you and your sister all over this pathetic little town." Dipper's eyes grew wide and his breaths came in short, panicked gasps. Bill's breath was warm against the side of his face. "That person," Bill said, his voice now so low, Dipper could barely hear it.

"Is you."


	13. He Told Me I was Holy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah...that's not how car batteries work.  
> P.S. Bill's a freak.

"A _conductor_?" Mabel asked, her tone incredulous. "What the hell is that?"

"It's what your brother is," Bill said, pacing back and forth through the living room.

All three of them had calmed down since Dipper and Bill's fight from earlier. Dipper was seated in one of the fold up chairs off to the side, staring at the ground, his brain still trying to compute whatever Bill was telling him. Mabel was on the couch, sitting crosslegged with the unloaded shotgun in her lap. Waddles was curled against her side, snoozing peacefully.

"Yes," she said with a roll of her eyes, "you've said that, but what does it _mean_?"

"A conductor is something that allows electric current to flow freely through it," Dipper said, still staring at the ground but speaking for the first time since the argument. "Things like metal or water."

A conductor is what Bill had called him. That's what he said he was, that what he said was causing every monster in Gravity Falls to flock to them, what had been causing them to do so since he and Mabel were twelve. It'd all been because of Dipper.

Bill clapped his hands and smiled wide. "Precisely!"

"I don't understand," Mabel said with a shake of her head. "What does that have to do with Dipper?"

"He's a conductor in the same way metal or wiring is," Bill explained, his hands fluttering about everywhere. "just not a conductor for electric current."

Mabel looked frustrated, like she was at the end of her rope. She huffed. "For _what_ , then?"

"Magic."

The room went silent. Both Bill and Mabel turned their gazes towards him and Dipper looked up at the both of them.

"It's magic, isn't it?" he said. "That's what I'm a conductor for?"

Bill's eye flicked to the ground and he let out a sigh. "Yeah, kid. That's right."

"All right, all right, hold up!" Mabel said throwing her hands in the air, nearly knocking the shotgun from her lap. "None of this is making any sense! How can Dipper be the one that's been attracting monsters to us since we were twelve? How was that even possible?"

Bill looked to her, his eye roaming over Mabel as if contemplating something. In the next moment he was gone, out the door. Dipper and Mabel looked at each other.

Two minutes later, Bill was back, carting with him a large, black box and a set of jumper cables.

"Hey, wait," Dipper said. "Is that the battery from my truck?"

"Details," Bill said off-handedly, not really answering Dipper's question. With a sigh, Bill dragged another one of the folding chairs over and sat it down facing either of them in the middle of the living room. He sat himself down nestling the car battery between his feet and attaching either jumper cable to its appropriate cell.

He leaned forward, each jumper cable in either hand. Bill stuck out his tongue and moving carefully, he touched the cables to either side of his of his tongue. There was a pop and fizzle as sparks flew as Bill jumped in his seat.

"Woo! Spicy!" Bill said, rocking back in his seat.

"I don't think that's follows fire safety," Mabel said, inching away from Bill and his electricity.  
"Hush now, listen to teacher," Bill said.

"Magic isn't that far off from electricity," he explained. "It's very different, but the two have similarities. Notice how my magic fire is the same color as lightning, or a bare spark of electricity?" He touched the two jumper cables together, making sparks fly.

"Or the same colors as the glowing butterflies in the forest?" Dipper asked. The memory of the glowing butterflies in the forest, the ones that had landed on him, fluttered in his memory.

"Butterflies?" Mabel asked, looking between them. "What butterflies."

Bill ignored her, talking to Dipper. "Yeah. The same as those. Anyways, you mortals harness electricity the same way beings like me harness magic. You direct the electric current using wire and conductors to transfer the energy into something else, like light or heat. It's the same with magic, we direct the magical current and transfer it into things like fire or spells. Only the conductors tend to be ourselves and our minds rather than anything as primitive as copper."

"But Dipper can't do any magic," Mabel said, finally catching Bill's attention.Waddles snorted in his sleep, his pig hooves cycling as he nestled closer to Mabel. "He rose the dead that one time, and anyone with training can exorcise ghosts, but none of the spells he's ever tried have ever worked."

"Yes," Bill said, waving his jumper cables around for emphasis. "Well, he's a rare case. A mortal that can conduct magic. No mortal can control magic, at least not in the way I or other demons can." Bill turned to Dipper. "You can't use magic, but you can transfer it, channel it from one place to another."

Dipper shook his head. "I don't get it. A conductor's not a magnet, Bill. What does any of this have to do with me attracting things like the multibear?"

Bill sighed and put his cables down. He dragged a hand down the side of his face. Dipper had the feeling that, for Bill, this was a lot like explaining quantum physics to a five-year-old. "You see that's were magic and electricity differ again," he said. "When wire conducts electricity, it doesn't change or effect it, it simply moves it from one place to another. _You_ , on the other hand have a tendency to _amplify_ the magic that runs through you. Again, you have no control or power over it, but any magic that's near you jumps to you, the way lightning jumps to the ground from storm clouds, or static shock jumps from person to person."

Bill picked up one of the jumper cables again and brought it close to the other. Close, but not touching. A spark flew from one cable to the other in a line of miniature lightning.

Dipper and Mabel shared glances. They hadn't always had the best experience with static electricity.

Bill set the cable down and continued. "Only with you, when the magic comes out the other side, it's stronger than before, more powerful. And that's why all these things, these goblins and ghouls, that's why you find them so easily, they're drawn to you the same way electricity is drawn to metal, even though most of them aren't even aware of it."

"So the butterflies from the forest," Dipper said slowly. "The gnomes and the multibear—

"They found you," Bill said. "They were drawn to you because they could sense the magic coursing through you."

"But that still doesn't explain why the gnomes and multibear were acting so feral," Dipper argued. "I've never seen them act like that."

Bill's eyebrows came in to meet together. His gold eye flicked away. "Now that, I have no explanation for. I know about that about as much as either of you."

"Well, is there anyway to stop it?" Mabel asked, leaning forward. "You know, like block his magic somehow?"

"Have you ever seen lightning through a curtain?" Bill asked her. "It may be fuzzy and you can't see the outline, but the light's still there. It's the same with magic, except that unfocused magic is more powerful and a bit more unpredictable than lightning."

Mabel's shoulders sank, like all the fight had drained out of her. Her eyebrows tilted upward. "So," she said. Dipper thought she sounded defeated. "What do we do then?

Bill shrugged. "The same thing you've been doing. Your brother's always been a conductor, nothing about that changes now, other than now you know."

Dipper suddenly felt like he'd swallowed a fist-full of dirt. He had to swallow twice before he could speak. "Could I be the one...you know, the reason why Gravity Fall's is getting weirder?"

Bill glanced at him, then shook his head. He leaned back in his chair, stretching. "Nah. Like I said, kid, this town's always been weird, since before you or Fordsie ever set foot here. Now that you're here, though, it just has a place to flock to."

 

"All the danger we've ever faced," Dipper said, his elbows resting on his knees as he still sat in the fold up chair. "All the lake monsters and ghosts and shape shifters. They were all because of me. I'm the one that's been putting her in danger."

Mabel had gone upstairs after cooing over Dipper and offering a few words of comfort. She didn't stay long, leaving him with his thoughts as she knew he liked. Bill didn't say anything, still sitting in his own chair, his fingers steepled and his eye focused on some unseen point in space.

Silence consumed them.

Dipper's throat grew thick, an overwhelming feeling of guilt and self-loathing overflowing in his chest. Bill had said he could help being a conductor, that he had no more control over it than he had over the color of his eyes. But is that was the case, why did Dipper blame himself so much?

"Why didn't you tell me?!" Dipper screamed, his voice cracking as he looked up at Bill.

Bill's eye flicked to him. He hefted a sigh as he stood from his chair. "I didn't think you needed to know. Like I said, you've been one your entire life, and nothing I can do could ever change that. Most people live their whole lives without learning they're conductors. You just had the luck of getting saddled in this town."

Dipper's eyes burned and he let them fall back to the carpet beneath his feet. He stared at it, his back hunched, his hands limp. "All this time," he muttered. "I thought it was just rotten luck, or maybe the gods hated us, or that it was your fault, but it wasn't. All this time, it was me. Just me."

"Pine Tree—"

"I have to protect her," Dipper said, standing up. "She can't stay near me if I'm this dangerous."

Dipper shoved past Bill and made for the stairs to the attic.

"Pine Tree—!" Bill called after him, but he was already gone.

  


  


The shouts and screams struck through the entire Shack. It was the biggest argument they'd had since high school.

Dipper wanted her to be safe, she could take care of herself, Dipper was a danger to her, but no more a danger than he'd been the rest of their lives, Dipper needed her to leave, Mabel needed to be here with him and help him, he had to make sure she was somewhere safe, the safest place was at the Shack, Dipper begged her to go, Mabel slapped him.

"If you wanted to abandon your only sister so bad, then you should have left me to the pterodactyls."

She left the Shack shouting these words, slamming the door behind her and dragging her suitcase down the front steps of the porch, Waddles squealing as he chased after her. Dipper heard the sound of her vintage electric-blue Beetle revving up, the engine roaring as she peeled away from the Shack and towards the street.

"You know," Bill sighed as he plopped down on the couch next to Dipper after he'd come down from arguing with his sister. "There were kinder ways to handle that."

Dipper stared at the blank screen of the tv. "That was kind," Dipper said. "She was never going to leave without a fight."

"Maybe that meant she was never supposed to leave," Bill offered.

"Maybe you should keep your nose in your own business," Dipper said to the television.

Bill let out another sigh and pushed himself up from the couch. He made to leave, but paused in the entry to the living room. "You know," he said, turning to face Dipper. "I've lived here for nearly eleven years now, three months of which I've spent with you—"

Bill's words cut short then, as if he wasn't certain of what he wanted to say next.

Dipper made it unnecessary. "Yeah, and you've lived other places longer. What's your point?"

Bill let out a small breath and left.

  


* * *

  


_"Watch him fall."_

_"Watch him fall."_

_"Watch him fall."_

_"Watch him fall."_

_"Watch him fall."_

Dipper scrambled at the edge of the hole. He kicked at the growing darkness that was threatening to pull him down. To pull him down, down, down into a sea of shadows and screaming, tortured souls that was going to swallow him whole.

The dark terrified him, more than anything else he'd seen in his entire life. The dark scared him. He didn't know what waited in the dark, couldn't see the creatures' big, nasty claws and bloody, gnashing teeth. He couldn't see them, couldn't find their weakness and devise a plan around it. He was useless in the dark, helpless. He was going to die in the dark that churned beneath his feet. He was going to die screaming and in pain and in agony. He knew it. He could feel it in the way the darkness reached for him, in the way it wrapped around him, trying to pull it into its open maw.

_"Watch him fall."_

Just like when he'd saved Mabel and he fell from the pterodactyl, crashing through the trees. He was going to fall again.

Voices surrounded him, familiar voices, ones he'd heard a hundred times over in other places, in other dreams. They kept saying the same thing. They always kept saying the same damned thing, over and over and over.

_"Just get to the thing he loves most."_

Dipper's fingers slipped and he scrambled at the edge of the hole, desperate to pull himself up as his feet kicked at empty air. He saw someone come up to him, a figure approaching in the blinding white of this stupid, endless office. Brown hair appeared before him and he saw the startling clarity of bright, hazel eyes. He was met with a smile of perfectly straight, white teeth. She placed her gentle hands atop his own, desperate, scrambling ones.

She opened her mouth and the same voices came out, the ones that'd been haunting his dreams for weeks.

_"Watch him fall."_

Mabel Pines smiled as she seized hold of her brother's hands and shoved him off into the hole and into the deep, soulless, unending darkness below.

_"Watch him fall."_

_"Watch him fall."_

_"Watch him fall."_

Dipper fell.

  


Dipper Pines woke screaming, drenched in sweat as his heart beat so hard against his chest, he thought it's burst. Dipper Pines woke to heaving breaths and tears on his face. He woke to fear and panic and a terrible, aching loneliness that felt like a dagger in his chest.

Sophia eyed him from her tank, as if resentful that she'd disturbed her sleep.

He'd had nightmares before about similar things, with the hole, the voices, and the darkness. But none of them had been like this. None of them had felt like this. With the darkness so close, he could feel it wrapping around him, piercing into his heart. With his sister, above him, smiling as she gave him over to it.

Dipper choked out a strangled sob. He was scared. He wasn't afraid to admit it. These dreams, whatever they were, they terrified him like nothing else. Dipper flung his sheets back and turned to get out of bed. His feet landed on the hardwood when he paused.

His first instinct was to go to Mabel. But she'd been gone for three days now, refusing to answer his calls or talk to him. There was no one left. Not Ford, not Stan, not Mabel, there was only him. Well, that wasn't strictly speaking true. There was...one other person.

  


Darkness clung to everything like a sheet, draping the Shack in shadows, hiding monsters behind curtains of black. Dipper tip-toed forward with careful steps, shying away from the darkness and the shadows as much as possible. He crawled forward through the dark, the whispers of voices in his ears.

When he reached the living room, he took a shuddering breath. He couldn't believe he was doing this. He must be mad.

Mad, or scared. Just very, very scared. He couldn't face the dark again. Not by himself.

Dipper cleared his throat and he saw as the lump of blankets on the couch shifted. A mess of blond curls poked up from one end.

"Pine Tree?" came Bill's sleep-weary voice.

Dipper twisted his fingers together. He had to swallow before he could speak, and when he did his voice shook in the most humiliating of ways. "I...I've been having nightmares again."

There was a moment of silence, and then Bill spoke. "Pine Tree, I'm not the one—"

"I know, I know you aren't," Dipper said quickly. He could hear the tremor in his own voice as he imagined the shadows of the Shack closing in on him. "It's just...they're getting worse."

Bill didn't answer, but Dipper could feel his eye on him, watching him, expectant.

Dipper cleared his throat. "Mabel's gone and I was, um, wondering if you could help me. You know, uh," he stumbled, embarrassment heating his face, "spend the night with me?"

There was nothing but silence. It was so quiet, Dipper could hear the ticking of the cat clock all the way in the kitchen. He ducked his head and squeezed his eyes shut as he clenched his hands in one another.

"Please, Bill," he said, his voice so soft and on the brink of tears, Dipper wasn't even sure Bill'd heard him. "Please, Bill, I can't be alone. Not right now."

Dipper fell against the frame of the living room's entrance. He slid down it to the floor, dry heaving with his face buried in his hands. He could feel the darkness pressing in on him from everywhere and it made him feel so frightened and so, so lonely.

He barely noticed when a pair of strong but gentle arms wrapped around him and hefted him up before they carried him to his bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there lovely peoples! I just wanted to let you know that I know I stopped responding to everyone's comments quite some time ago. It was either write responses or write this story. But I just wanted to let you all know that I still read each and every one of them and they ALL make me smile and make my heart do a little tap-dance every time I see a new one. I just wanted to let you know I still appreciate everyone's comments, even though I don't respond, and every time I feel I need a boost to keep me going with this story, I pull them up so I can read all of your kind words! Thank you! ~ <3


	14. Magic, Madness, Heaven, Sin

Dipper woke to warmth. A familiar warmth that flushed his cheeks and made his limbs heavy.

He let out a sleepy moan and shifted under the sheets, the sunlight streaming in through his window making it difficult to sleep for much longer. The arms wrapped around him tightened, pulling snug across his waist. A shock of electricity ran down Dipper's spine as he felt Bill's breath ghost across the nape of his neck.

Dipper shut his eyes and clenched his jaw. Right, electricity. That's what Bill had said, right? That magic was like electricity. And that Dipper was a conductor for said electricity. Dipper opened his eyes and stared at a point on the opposite wall.

He was a freak. There was no way around that. He was nothing more than a freak that was in the same league as all the monsters and demons he'd been facing for the last few years of his life. The only difference between him and them, was that they could at least control their powers. He didn't even have any powers, just a recessive trait that had cursed him more than anything else.

Dipper could feel the warmth of Bill pressed against his back, could feel the pressure of the demon's arms looped around him. Bill had been sleeping in his bed the last few nights. Dipper's dreams hadn't alleviated or grown any less terrifying, but it was a lot easier to wake in the middle of the night with someone beside him—even if that person was someone he hated.

Bill wasn't the most...understanding sleeping partner. Most of the time, he'd smack Dipper upside the head or flick him in the nose, tell him to stop whining, and go back to sleep. But it wasn't really kindness that he needed, anyways. He simply needed reassurance. Reassurance that he wasn't dead or dying, that he was alive and here. Reassurance that something else still existed beyond the pressing darkness of his bedroom, and whether that reassurance came from the touch of Bill's skin or the heat of his breath in the night, it didn't matter. Because Dipper was here, and he was alive, and he was fine.

None of this of course included the times Bill's hands would travel south in his sleep, or his nose nuzzled a bit too close for comfort. Those were the times Dipper shoved the demon out of bed unceremoniously onto the floor. Dipper swore Bill liked it better down there with how many times that had happened.

With sigh, Dipper crawled out from under the covers and gets up, reluctantly leaving the warmth of bed behind him.

 

* * *

 

"You should call her. Apologize to her."

"Apologize for what?"

Bill just looked at him. "You know what."

Dipper stared at the fire crackling in the fire pit in the back yard of the Shack, sparks flying and embers floating upwards towards the stars overhead. They set up fold up chairs around the pit, something Dipper and Ford had dug out when he was sixteen so they could all have a place to come together and hang out. This was the first time the pit had been lit in nearly four years.

It'd been officially been eight days since Mabel left, the longest eight days of his life. Dipper knew where she was, of course, she'd texted him the day after she left to let him know she was safe, but she refused to answer his calls, refused to talk to him any more after that.

Dipper sighed and took another swig from his beer. "She's safe."

"What does it matter that she's safe if she hates you?" Bill asked.

In the next moment, Dipper chucked his beer at the fire pit. The embers shifted and there was a sound of shattering glass.

"She hates me anyway," he said, watching as the beer label caught fire and burned, curling at its edges.

For a moment, no one said anything. Dipper watched as flames licked the broken glass of his bottle.

"Pine Tree," Bill said. "You can't believe that."

"Why not?" Dipper asked the fire. "I do."

Bill sighed and leaned forward in his chair. "And why do you?"

Dipper's eyes flicked to him, red and raw with unshed tears. "You know why. I'm a monster, a freak—"

"Well, you've always been a freak."

Dipper glared at him. "Ever since I was twelve I've been putting her in danger."

"Yes, but it wasn't exactly your fault."

Dipper didn't say anything.

"Then again, I have a feeling you would've gone looking for danger, even if it didn't find you first."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Dipper said.

"Pine Tree," Bill sighed.

"Oh, don't 'Pine Tree' me," Dipper snapped. "What could you possibly know about any of this? You have no idea what it's like to have a sister, to have a family that you need to protect. You're nothing but a demon with no morals."

Silence hung low over the fire, Dipper's words lingering in the air. Owls hooted between the trees. The fire cracked and popped.

"You're wrong."

Bill had spoken so softly, Dipper wasn't even sure he'd heard anything. "What?"

"I said," Bill said, his voice louder. "You're wrong."

Bill continued to stare at the fire and for the longest time neither of them said anything.

"I had a sister once," Bill said, shattering the silence. He looked into the heart of the fire like he was looking into a worm hole, his gaze far off, like he was looking into a different age and a different time. "It was a long, long time ago. Before you lot invented the wheel. Before you built the pyramids—my idea by the way—before you declared your countries or learned how to sail on the seas."

Dipper watched Bill. He'd never seen the demon like this, so distant. Dipper thought of the first night he'd let Bill out of the basement, how wild and murderous he'd been. The chains that had held him had all but kept him frozen in time, suspended in the midst of reality and space. Since the last few months that Bill had been released, though, Dipper couldn't help but wonder if the demon had grown more...human. As if living as a human, trapped in a physical body was changing Bill in ways he could begin to understand.

"Bill," Dipper said softly.

"You see, the thing about demons," Bill said before Dipper could continue, "is that we weren't meant to be this way. We weren't _born_ demons. We're made. We start out just like any other human and then before we know it, we're stripped of our humanity, torn from everything that made us who we were and forced into another reality, our bodies and souls ripped away so that there's nothing left. Nothing but magic and sin."

Dipper isn't sure if he should say what he's about to ask. "Who does?" He swallowed. "Bill, who made you?"

Bill didn't answer for the longest time. Dipper saw the firelight in the reflection of Bill's eye, can see it jump and dance in the night. For a moment, Dipper wondered if Bill ever missed his magic fire. Dipper had never once seen it since Bill was made human. For a split moment, _Dipper_ missed the blue fire. It was sinister and ominous and meant terrible, terrible things, true. But it was also the bluest blue he'd ever seen, like melted sapphire. It was the most beautiful thing Dipper had ever laid eyes on.

Finally, Bill took a sigh and stood. "Talk to your sister, Pine Tree. You never know how long you'll have her."

And then Bill left, walking off into the woods in no particular direction, the shadows of the trees swallowing him.

Dipper watched him go, realizing with a pang in his heart that he's seen nothing but Bill leaving lately. Nothing bug Bill's back as he walked away from him. And Dipper realized that he just wanted Bill to turn around and come back.

 

* * *

 

 

Pacifica's bed was huge. She said she'd brought her own to the hotel because the one in her room wasn't big enough.

Well, Mabel thought, this one was certainly big enough. It took up nearly the entire room. The canopy that accompany it had to be left behind in storage because it was too tall for the ceiling. They could both sleep on it and still be five feet apart. It was ridiculous.

Not that they spent much time sleeping together. Pacifica spent nearly all her time at the Manor, overseeing the renovations and rebuilding of the pool house. Mabel swung by to see her once or twice, but most of the time, the Northwest girl was too busy to spare her much time. So instead, Mabel had spent the last week or so with Grenda and Candy, Grenda finally having come home from her wrestling tour. Candy took time off from her job at the local electronics repair shop in town to spend time with the both of them.

The rest of her time she spent ignoring her brother. She knew she technically wasn't being fair, but she also didn't quite care. No one else could get under her skin like her brother. Jeez, he thought he was like come kind of knight or something. Well, who had been the one to save his butt more than a hundred times over? Who'd been the one to save him from Bill that time he made a deal with the demon when they were twelve and then warned him about it again three months ago and had been right the entire time? That's right, her.

But he just wanted to march around, acting like he was in charge of everyone and send her away for her own "safety." Yeah, right. He'd be wanting to marry her off with her dowery next. It wasn't like he was the boss of her. It wasn't like he _owned_ her.

So what did she do? She, well...left.

But that wasn't the point. The point was that Dipper was just trying to protect her, and she knew that. But that didn't make her any less mad.

And it wasn't like she was thinking any of this while she and Waddles were taking running leaps onto Pacifica's much too big of a bed to see how high they could bounce. They'd just nearly made it half-way to the ceiling when she heard her phone ringing. Still breathless, she crawled across a sea of comforters to get to the night-side table and grab her phone.

She looked down at the caller ID and paused. Any other time, she'd probably hang up. The phone continued to ring, flashing it's screen at her.

With a sigh, she hit the green button. "Yo, bro-bro."

 

* * *

 

The new Northwest pool house would be finished in a few more months. The pool itself however, surprisingly, did not need much in the way of repairs. They'd mended the cracks and cleaned the tiles and filled it in less than a week, just in time for the last half of summer.

The sun shone overhead, hot and bright. There came the slap of wet feet on concrete and Mabel let out the loudest shriek as she catapulted into the air, curled into a cannon ball. She hit the water with a slap, sending waves across the pool. She breached the surface, laughing as Waddles snorted on the shallow steps.

She barely had time to catch her breath, before something seized her shoulders and shoved her beneath the surface again. She whirled under water, her hand shooting out before she managed to slap something hard. The pressure on her shoulders vanished and she came up gasping.

Dipper came up a foot away, laughing past the water streaming down his face.

"Dipper. Delphius. Pines," Mabel said, splashing water at him with every name. "You are the worst!"

"Apparently, but also the better swimmer," he said still laughing as he ducked under her sprays of water.

"Hey, Pines Freaks."

They both looked up to find Pacifica, who'd finally taken a break from all her renovating at Mabel's insistence. She stood over them at the edge of the pool, already tan from what was no doubt the use of tanning beds, her blonde hair glittering like spun gold in the sunlight, and clad in nothing but a bright purple designer bikini.

"No drowning each other in my pool," she said, tilting her head to flash them a wink over her sunglasses. "Or I'll kick both your asses."

"Oh, yes, please," Mabel muttered, sinking her chin into the water, watching as the blonde queen sauntered off to lay a towel out on a pool chair.

Dipper smacked her upside the head and she splashed water at him, laughing.

"Woof," she said, glancing back at Pacifica laid out on her chair. "She has abs. Has she always had abs?"

Dipper stared at her a moment before letting out a laugh. "Mabel, the girl's a health nut. She's probably had abs since she was eighteen."

"Yeah," Mabel said. "But she's hot."

"I bet," Dipper said, moving to float on his back. "The weather channel said the temperature would be off the charts all this week."

Mabel grinned. "That's not what I meant."

She then seized her floating brother's shoulders and forced him under with a surprised "glub."

The pool had been Pacifica's idea. Dipper had apologized and so had Mabel. They were the Mystery Twins after all, it wasn't like they could stay mad at each other forever. Dipper admitted he'd been overbearing and Mabel admitted that she'd overreacted. A day at the pool was just what they needed to cool off—literally and figuratively—and what better time than a summer national holiday? It was the first time they'd seen each other in over a week, and Mabel's first instinct was to bolt across the pool deck and slam into her brother, hugging him tight. That was of course before she hefted him into the air and sent the both of them tumbling into the water.

But they were fine now. They'd always be fine, Mabel realized. That's just who they were, not matter how much they fought, they'd always find their way back home.

By the time Dipper came back up, Bill had arrived. He'd taken his sweet time changing by himself in Dipper's truck. As it were, he didn't have any swimsuits of his own, so he had to borrow one of Dipper's, which he kept having to hitch up. Not because he was any skinnier than Dipper, but simply because he had the slimmest hips Mabel had ever seen, with the shoulder to waist ration of Chris Evans.

"Oooo," she said, tapping her brother on the shoulder. "Our blond's not half-bad himself."

He followed her gaze and Mabel saw his face flush slightly. Bill was nearly as toned as Pacifica, with slight abs and a trim waist. His skin shone like bronze under the summer sun. When he turned, she saw that tattoos laced down his muscular back, black and thick, with patterns of triangles and eyes woven into them. Mabel didn't even know Bill _had_ tattoos. She wondered how he'd gotten them.

"Hey," Dipper said. "No frick-fracking with the psychopathic dream demon."

Mabel hooked her elbows over the side of the pool and let her legs drift. The long sleeves of her swim shirt caught on the grit of the pool's edge, but she didn't mind.

She rolled her eyes. "As if," she said. "I'd rather scoop my own eyes out than let that monster get anywhere near me."

Dipper swam up to lounge at the edge of the pool with her.

"Is he still staying at the Shack?" she asked.

"Yeah. The both of us are going to see if we can find if any more magical creatures have gone feral. We're going into the woods tomorrow. Hopefully we can find a source of it and see if it's connected to all the other spikes in anomaly activity."

"Hmmm, I might hang around here for a few more days, then."

"Only if you want to. Remember, until we can stop whatever's driving everyone crazy, they're all going to be coming for me. They might end up hurting you if you come back to the Shack."

"I'd like to see them try," Mabel hummed as she closed her eyes, letting the warmth of the sun wash over her face.

"You know you might want to try giving him a shot," Dipper offered. "He's not half bad once you get to know him."

Mabel opened an eye to look at him. Before she could answer, a shriek came from the other side of the pool. They looked to find Pacifica chasing Bill with her pool towel. Apparently, the blonde had fallen asleep and Bill had taken the opportunity to draw a penis on her face. Mabel looked back to her brother and raised an eyebrow.

"Okay," he sighed. "He's a little over half bad."

There came another shriek and Mabel looked to see as Bill had hooked his arms around Pacifica's waist and they were both teetering at the edge of the pool. Pacifica managed to resist for half a second before they both fell forward and crashed into the water, Bill cackling.

Dipper laughed and Mabel swum over just as Pacifica surfaced, her wet, platinum hair hanging in a sheet in front of her face. Mabel reached forward and parted it to find Pacifica, her eyes streaked with black as she looked absolutely miserable. The penis Bill had drawn was, thankfully, not in permanent marker and was already streaking. The sunglasses she'd been wearing were had sunk to the bottom of the pool.

Mabel let out a laugh. "What are you doing wearing make-up to the pool?" she asked, pushing sopping wet strands of hair out of Pacifica's face.

"Well I didn't actually expect to _swim_ ," she whined, scrubbing furiously at her face. She looked like a drowned Winter Soldier.

Mabel could hear Dipper and Bill splashing and rough-housing from across the pool. She glanced over her shoulder to see Bill already shoving Dipper underwater and climbing on top of his shoulders. She turned back around, smiling.

"Come on," she said, grabbing Pacifica's hand. "Let's go get some revenge."

 

* * *

 

Chicken was not Dipper's forte. Especially not when it was against two girls, one of which could literally crush his skull between her thighs. Thankfully, he wasn't going up against Pacifica. Instead, he'd be facing his sister, who was grinning wide at him from the other side of the pool, legs wrapped around Pacifica's impressively muscular torso.

"You ready, Pine Tree?"

Dipper looked down at Bill's head between his thighs. Dipper squeezed his legs tighter, his skin slick with water. "Um," he said. "Not really—"

"Charge!" Bill screamed and they charged through the water.

The girls let out twin shrieks and chugged forward to meet them. The two collided in the middle, water splashing everywhere. Mabel and Dipper grappled with each other, with Dipper trying to pull her off by her swim shirt as Mabel shoved her hand against his face. They both went down with a splash, laughing all the way.

All four continued like that long into the day, with chicken fights and races and splash wars. All of Pacifica's make-up had washed away by the time late afternoon came and Grenda and Candy showed up, clad in their own swimwear, with burgers from the diner in town in tow. They didn't all climb out of the pool until dusk, as the sun sank towards the horizon. All six of them gathered at the edge of the pool deck facing towards the eye-shaped cliffs in the distance as they dug into their burgers and fries. Grenda carried Candy on her shoulders as Mabel and Pacifica shared a towel on a pool chair, their long, sopping hair spilling over their backs, blonde and brown tangling with each other. Dipper and Bill shared another towel.

Dipper knew Pacifica didn't really know Grenda or Candy as much as she knew Mabel by now, but he was impressed by how nice she'd been with them, eccentricities and all. He'd been surprised that she'd invited them to the pool with the rest of them, surprised by how willing she'd been to meet Mabel's friends.

He glanced over his shoulder at Mabel, who was currently trying to smear her left over ketchup on Pacifica's face. She managed to get a dollop on her nose, at which point Pacifica froze. Then Pacifica moved with lightning speed and shoved what was left of her burger into Mabel's face and down the front of her swim shirt, smearing ketchup and mayonnaise everywhere. The two squealed with laughter and Dipper couldn't help but smile as he turned back around. Maybe there was a reason Pacifica was trying to meet Mabel's friends after all.

Dipper was munching thoughtfully on a bite of burger, staring out at the sea of trees beneath them as the sun finally slipped below the horizon started, when Bill nudged him.

"Hey, Pine Tree, what're we waiting for?"

Dipper grinned. "Hold on, you'll see."

Just as the last rays of light died out, there came a high-pitched whine, quickly followed by a short silence and then a deafening _BOOM!_ An enormous starburst of light exploded in the night sky, sparks of white and red and blue fizzling out as they fell towards the Earth.

The firework was quickly followed by another, one right after another in a cacophonous show fit for the Fourth of July. Dipper glanced to his right to see Bill staring up at the sky, eye wide and mouth slightly agape. His burger was still in his hand, half-eaten and forgotten. Dipper laughed, joy at the sight bubbling up inside him like nothing he'd felt before.

Bill glanced at him, finally snapping out of his trance. A grin broke across his face as he turned back to the fireworks. "I've seen them before," he muttered. Dipper could barely hear him over the sound of the booms. "In dreams and everything like that. But never in person. I always thought it was madness that you meatsacks enjoyed something so destructive, but frowned at murder." Bill let out a short laugh. "Guess that means there's a little madness in everyone when you think about it."

Bill's eye was so wide, Dipper could see the fireworks in its reflection, each burst lighting up the gold iris in brilliant colors.

"They're beautiful, Pine Tree," Bill muttered as explosions of light continued to boom overhead.

Dipper smiled. "Yeah," he said, still watching Bill and that beautiful, child-like expression of awe and wonder on his face. He never once looked back at the sky. "Yeah, they are."


	15. Give in to Attraction

"Pine Tree, my feet hurt."

"I don't care, Bill," Dipper said as he swatted away another tree branch. The summer heat sent another bead of sweat to trickle down his back as they made their way through the forest.

The mid-day sun shone high overhead, nearly blotted out by the dense trees that seemed to grow closer together the further he and Bill went. Dipper could hear Bill following along behind him, the clink of his back-pack sounding rhythmic with each step the demon took. Dipper had his own backpack, of course, but he'd thrown together Bill's for the hike, unceremoniously shoving his old high school bag at the demon before they left.

After the fireworks display the night before, Candy and Grenda both went home, Mabel gave Dipper one last bone-crushing hug before running off with Pacifica to her hotel, and Dipper had driven him and Bill home, the demon fast asleep before they even pulled up to the Shack.

Dipper had to rouse the demon in order to get the both of them inside. Exhausted and tired, Bill all but dragged Dipper down into bed with him and was snoring in seconds, arms wrapped tightly around his bedmate. Dipper had tried in vein to wriggle out of the demon's grip, but eventually had to give it up, instead accepting his fate and falling into unconsciousness in Bill's arms. Dipper didn't have a single dream the entire night.

"I'm thirsty," Bill said.

"You have water."

They'd started their hike nearly two hours ago. Dipper knew it would take a while to get there, but the time seemed to drag on with Bill's constant whining. The heat seemed to be working on Dipper's nerves as well.

"I'm hot."

"Oh my god!" Dipper said, spinning around to face Bill. "Does it _look_ like I give a shit!"

A grin broke out over Bill's face. "Made you look."

Dipper glared at Bill before turning back around. "You're lucky murder's illegal."

"Lucky in the sense that you can't kill me or that I can't kill anyone else?" Bill asked, crunching leaves beneath this shoes. "Because I assure you, the second one is the exact opposite of lucky for me."

Despite the fact that Bill couldn't see him, Dipper gave an exasperated roll of his eyes. Did the demon ever shut up? Dipper smirked at the thought. No, of course he didn't. Dipper spared a glance over his shoulder at Bill, following him through the forest, gold hair falling into his face and a thin sheen of sweat coating his bronze face. Dipper couldn't help but think Bill looked more and more human every day. And really, with a face like that, Dipper supposed he could stand the incessant talking for at least a little longer.

"Do you think you could kill me, Pine Tree?"

Dipper didn't even bother looking back this time. "What kind of a question is that?" he asked, pulling himself up by a low-baring tree branch. Their path through the woods was becoming steadily steeper.

"A normal one."

"Most normal people don't ask whether their," Dipper searched for the right word as he blew a leaf out of his hair, "...friend would be willing to kill them."

"Do you mean that?"

Dipper shrugged. "Mean what?"

"When you said I was your friend. Did you mean that?"

Dipper paused, mauling this question over before glancing back at Bill. "I consider most people I've traded murder attempts with as a friend."

Bill stopped for a moment, staring at Dipper before a grin broke out over his face. Dipper reached down a hand and helped pull Bill up a particularly steep part of the path.

"Come on," he said as Bill climbed up next to him. "The cave's just a little further up."

"How can you remember one stupid cave after all these years?" Bill asked with a groan as he stretched out his back.

"Well, I've hung out with the Manotaurs a few times since I first met them," Dipper explained as he adjusted his back pack straps. "We're friends, just like I was friends with Multibear."

Bill's eye flitted to give Dipper a side-ways glance. The memory of what'd happened to Multibear hung heavy in the air between them. "You really think they'll recognize you? That they'll be normal?"

Dipper shrugged. "Hard to say. Everyone else has been freaking out lately and we have no idea why. There's nothing that says that they haven't—"

Dipper's arm shot out, catching Bill around the chest and bringing them both to a stop. There, in the middle of the forest, towering over them was the rough and ragged edges to the yawning mouth of a cave. It looked rather out of place in the middle of leafy foliage and bright sunlight, the entrance seeming dark and overflowing with shadows. Dipper didn't fail to notice that the twittering of birds and the rustle of leaves had suddenly seemed to stop either. Arm still braced against Bill's chest, he felt as demon's breath caught.

Dipper knew he didn't have to say what was coming, but he did anyways.

"We're here."

* * *

 

The cave was a lot darker and damper than Dipper remembered, despite his numerous visits. Slime seemed to have seeped down the walls and a chill crawled up his back despite the summer heat outside. There was nothing but silence, interrupted every now and then by the skittering of pebbles on the stone ground, as the two walked further and further into the cave. Dipper's flashlight seemed horribly dim against the endless stretch of shadows. Memories of his dreams of him falling into an all-consuming darkness flashed in his mind's eye and suddenly he couldn't move.

Dipper's eyes grew wide, trying to take in an endless, seamless black and his heart started pounding painfully hard in his chest. This was it, the darkness was going to swallow him whole and he was going to disappear forever. He knew the thought was stupid, and he knew the dream was just a dream, and he knew that having a panic attack in front of Bill was horribly embarrassing, but all the same, he couldn't help the wave of fear crashing down—

A silk-gloved hand suddenly brushed across Dipper's palm. He jumped before he felt familiar, long, slender fingers weave in between his own. Dipper looked up to find Bill staring defiantly into the darkness.

"Can't give up yet, Pine Tree," he said, flashing Dipper a wink. "We still have a fight to win."

Dipper swallowed the lump in his throat and turned his flashlight back towards the endless tunnel. Bill gave his hand a squeeze and Dipper pressed on.

They seemed the walk into the cave was taking twice as long as the walk it took to get there, but Dipper knew it couldn't have been any longer than five minutes when the tunnel suddenly opened up into a large cavern. Stalactites bared down on them like teeth from the sweeping ceiling. The dirt floor was flat and stretched on for about a hundred feet before dropping on in a steep incline that ended in what was undoubtedly a cliff into a deep, black abyss. Defunct arcade games and broken exercise equipment lay abandoned throughout the cavern and the torches that usually burned brightly in their wall brackets had long since gone cold, filling the cave with an even eerier stillness.

Bill let go of Dipper's hand as Dipper's flashlight roamed over everything. The Manotaur cave looked strangely in a state of disarray—which was saying something. It also looked—however—like no one had been here in quite some time.

A strange, tingly sensation started to creep its way up Dipper's spine and he had a sudden flashback to when the Multibear had attacked them. It felt very similar to right before the run-in with the ferrel gnomes, like a thousand eyes were suddenly all focused on him, watching him from the shadows.

"Bill," Dipper said, his voice cracking. The demon had wandered over to a corner of the cave to inspect a pommel horse that looked like it'd been ripped in two. Bill looked up at the sound of his name.

Dipper swallowed the thickness in his throat, a distant buzzing starting to grow in his ears. "We should probably leave—"

No sooner were the words out of his mouth, then a horrible roar ripped through the air. Dipper had just enough time to register the sound of charging hooves before he dove to the side. The blurry image of a fully-grown Manotaur ran by him, before running head-long into the far wall of the cave.

Dipper scrambled to his feet as the Manotaur steered back around, shaking its massive, shaggy head. It looked just like the gnomes and the Multibear had, Dipper realized as the Manotaur collected its bearings after nearly knocking itself out. He was foaming at the mouth, his tiny, bloodshot eyes rolling madly in his skull, and his nostrils flaring with every labored breath. Finally, the creature's eyes found Dipper in the dark.

"Oh shit."

The Manotaur let out a mighty bellow and charged, and this time, Dipper wasn't fast enough. The Manotaur's horns caught Dipper right in the stomach. Dipper gasped as all the wind was seized from him and he felt something inside his chest crack. _Not again_ , Dipper managed to think before he was thrown against the wall. He let out a grunt before sliding back down to the ground, his back pack digging into his shoulders. His flashlight had gone flying, cracking against the wall before sputtering out.

"Pine Tree!"

Dipper looked up and managed to focus his eyes enough to see Bill, half-way across the cavern. Three more Manotaurs had entered the cavern, with eyes just as mad and rolling as the first, and they were all advancing on Bill.

The demon didn't seem that worried about his own safety, however, as he wrestled with both horns of one creature, pushing the Manotaur back with inhuman strength. He barely spared the Manotaur a glance, his eye instead focused on Dipper, wide and panicked-looking.

Dipper had an inkling to think that this was rather strange, given he'd never once seen Bill look so scared, before he heard a guttural snort off to his left. Reality came crashing down on Dipper as he looked to find the first Manotaur had steered back around and was now pawing the ground with a hoof, glaring at Dipper.

Dipper scrambled to his feet just as the Manotaur roared again. He just managed to get out of the way before the Manotaur ran headlong once more into the wall. The entire cavern seemed to shake with the force of the impact. Dipper made to run towards Bill to try and give the demon some help, but before he'd even taken two steps, some invisible force stopped him dead.

Confusion and panic swept over Dipper before he realized the Manotaur had seized hold of his back pack, the straps digging into his shoulders. Dipper didn't even have time to scream before the Manotaur let out another roar and hefted Dipper high into the air and vaulted him across the cavern.

Dipper managed to catch a glimpse of dim yellow that had to be Bill before he saw the ground of the cavern rushing up to meet him. He shut his eyes and hit the ground hard, pain shooting through his shoulder as he skidded and rolled over the rock-strewn ground. Dipper waited for his momentum to ebb and come to a stop, only to find that it didn't.

He opened his eyes and found himself skidding down the steep incline that lined the furthest part of the cavern. Panic seized him as he saw the edge of the floor and the empty darkness beyond drawing steadily closer. Dipper scrambled, his fingernails digging into the dirt floor, trying to stop his fall—but it was too late. With the Manotaur's toss, he'd already gathered too much momentum. He could feel the ground rush by beneath him. He was going to go flying off the edge.

Panic flooded Dipper and his mind was suddenly filled with nothing but images of holes in the floor and empty, pitless nothingness, and Mabel grinning down at him as he fell into the darkness. Dipper barely registered the sound of a pained roar and the scampering of hooves before his scrambling feet slipped over the edge and were suddenly kicking at nothing.

Dipper rolled over the edge of the cliff and right into the abyss.

A black-gloved hand reached out seemingly from nowhere, seizing Dipper's wrist. Dipper's already injured arm screamed in pain as it was wrenched up wards and his fall came to a stop. For a dazed moment, he hung there, on the edge of the cliff, staring down into the deep dank pit that looked ready to swallow him.

Dipper looked up. Bill looked back down at him, his silk-gloved hand gripping Dipper's wrist in a death-hold. The demon was panting, his face streaked with dirt and sweat and there was a long gash in the side of his face. His eye was wide and he looked just as panicked as Dipper felt, dangling over the edge of an endless crevice. Without his flashlight, the darkness was deeper than ever, but Dipper swore he'd never seen Bill's eye shine brighter.

Finally, Bill cracked a smile, still breathing heavily.

"Hey, Pine Tree. How's it hangin'?"

 

* * *

 

Dipper inhaled sharply. " _Careful_."

Bill jerked another stitch into place and Dipper winced.

The sun had started to set beyond the trees that surrounded the Mystery Shack, throwing the tiny kitchen into a mosaic of oranges and pinks. Dipper couldn't help but think the scene looked eerily familiar to the one a number of months ago, when Mabel had been pulling glass out of Dipper's hand and Bill had been tied up screaming on the couch.

This time, however, Bill was the one patching Dipper up, threading stitches into Dipper's skin along the giant gash that had opened up along his ribs—a souvenir from the Manotaur's horns.

After Bill had hauled Dipper back up to the level floor of the cavern, Dipper had noticed an absence of charging Manotaurs. Glancing around the cavern, however, he saw no bodies, and barely more than a few small, dark patches of what was undoubtedly fresh blood, so Dipper didn't ask what had happened. Bill had then helped Dipper stagger back to the Shack through the forest, his shirt soaked with blood and his ribs positively screaming.

They'd managed to make it into the kitchen and to the table chairs without incident. Bill even managed to find the first aide kit and had insisted on stitching Dipper up before anything else.

Bill glanced up from his bloody work and grinned. "Did I ever tell you that pain is hilarious?"

Dipper scowled, though he couldn't exactly see Bill from this position. "Not exactly the best way to reassure the person you're trying to help patch up."

"To-may-to, to-mah-to," Bill said with a shrug and turned back to his stitches.

Dipper jumped, wincing away. "Geez, you're even worse at this than Mabel."

"Not if I'm _trying_ to hurt you," Bill said, a smile in his tone.

"Bill!"

"All right, all right, stop your whining."

Dipper sighed and Bill kept stitching. Dipper had lost count of how many had already been sewn and he just hoped that Bill wasn't giving him more than he actually needed. A brief silence filled the kitchen, interrupted only by the ticking cat clock on the wall.

"You don't toss and turn that much in your sleep anymore," Bill suddenly muttered, still focused on Dipper's side.

Dipper blinked, surprised. "So?"

"You still having those bad dreams?"

Dipper couldn't see Bill's face, with the demon being hunched over inches from Dipper's ribs. Dipper shifted slightly. "Sometimes."

"You still want me to keep you company at night?"

Dipper paused. Then, in a very quiet voice, "Only if you want to."

There was a short stretch of silence and Dipper felt his stitches tug slightly.

"The only thing more fun than hurting you, Pine Tree," Bill said with a sigh as he leaned back in his chair, "is seeing other things hurt you—especially dreams. You're done by the way." Bill nodded to Dipper's side.

Dipper ignored the second part, staring at Bill with his shirt still bunched under his arms. "Do you really mean that?"

Bill glanced up at him. "What do you think?"

Dipper didn't answer. Instead, he pulled his shirt back down over the stitched gash that now ran over the words _Trust No One_ inked into his side.

He took the first aide kit from Bill and scooted his chair closer to the demon. There was a moment's awkward pause as Dipper realized he might have moved a bit too close than was necessary. Bill was suddenly very close now, the ebb of his breath fluttering over Dipper's cheek.

Dipper didn't move back. Instead, he rummaged in the first aide kit before reaching up with a peroxide-soaked cotton ball. He hesitated for a second before gently dabbing at the gash that ran down the side of Bill's face. For a long time, neither said anything.

Dipper was the first to break the silence. "Bill, do you hate us?"

There was a moment's pause, and then, "No, Pine Tree, I don't hate you."

Dipper swallowed, still dabbing at Bill's already clean cut. They were very close. Close enough that Dipper could smell Bill's strange scent of cinnamon and campfire smoke. He could see Bill's long lashes flutter over his pure gold iris. Through the grime and sweat that still caked the demon's face, Dipper could make out the smudged remains of eye-liner and had to resist the urge to wipe the rest of it away.

Dipper felt his heart stutter in his chest, the dying sunlight making Bill's skin shimmer like it was dusted with gold. He remembered the image of Bill looking down at him from the edge of the cliff, like Dipper was the only thing he could see. He remembered the rush of overwhelming relief as he dangled over the cliff's edge. He could feel it now, making his heart speed up and his throat grow tight as he looked at Bill, the thrill of facing death in the face making his skin tingle.

Or...maybe it was something else.

Dipper swallowed before he spoke. "What do you feel about me, then?"

Dipper jumped as Bill suddenly gabbed hold of Dipper's hand, barely inches from his face. He turned Dipper's palm towards him and Dipper could feel the demon's breath ghost across his fingertips. Bill studied Dipper's hand. Was it Dipper's imagination or could he see Bill's breathing hitch?

"You need a bandage," Bill said finally, looking at the cuts and scrapes along Dipper's palm. He glanced at the empty first aide kit. He dropped Dipper's hand and rose to his feet. "I think I saw some in Shooting Star's room."

He turned to leave, but Dipper seized his hand, stopping him. "Bill."

Bill didn't turn around. "Pine Tree," he said softly. "Now's not really the time."

"Bill," Dipper said, hating the pleading edge in his own voice. "Tell me how you feel."

Finally, Bill turned. "Pine Tree—"

Before he could finish, Dipper was on his feet, his other hand cupping Bill's jaw as he kissed the dream demon.

He had his eyes closed and he could feel Bill's warmth under his fingers, could feel the demon's lips against his. He could feel the pent up anger and frustration and repressed yearning from the last few months spill into his chest and up his throat. He could feel Bill, rigid beneath his fingertips, unmoving beneath his lips and pressed forward, desperate for any sort of reaction, _anything_ that would let this hurricane of emotions inside him dissipate.

Finally, Dipper let go. He pulled back from Bill, letting the demon's fingers slip free of his own and he took a step back, his heart racing so hard, it hurt.

Dipper looked at Bill, panting slightly, his cheeks warm and his throat tight, but Bill's face was blankly impassive. The demon stared at Dipper, eye slightly wide with surprise, but besides that, his face was so inexpressive and unruffled, it was painful.

Finally, Bill blinked and looked away from Dipper. "Actually, Pine Tree, I think you're done being patched up. You should get some rest."

"Bill—"

"I'll be on the couch if you need me."

And with that, Bill left, leaving Dipper alone in the fading light of the kitchen, his ribs aching with each painful throb of his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bet ya'll though this was dead ;)  
> Merry Christmas~


	16. A Fragile Line

"See you soon, love," Pacifica had said, before planting a kiss on Mabel's cheek.

Mabel had opened her mouth to say good-bye, but the kiss had surprised her so much, nothing seemed to be coming out. Pacifica didn't seem to notice however, as she flashed Mabel a smile and a wave before heading back into the hotel and leaving Mabel standing dumbstruck by her electric blue bug.

Realization caught up to her and Mabel tried to yell something before Pacifica disappeared behind those doors, but all she managed was to choke on her own words. She'd spent the entire ride back to the Shack gently brushing the place Pacifica had kissed her, as if to make sure it didn't vanish.

 _Well that was...weird_ , Mabel thought to herself. Pacifica had never been one to show any kind of affection, even after they'd become friends. She might hug Mabel good-bye if she was feeling up to it, but a _kiss_? It baffled her. _What'd she kiss me for?_

Sure, Mabel would be lying if she said she'd never thought about Pacifica as more than friends, but none of those thoughts had ever been serious. Pacifica was gorgeous, smart, ambitious, and so easily embarrassed it was laughable, all of which Mabel found profoundly enjoyable. But the thought of them dating was as far flung as all of Mabel's celebrity crushes, which was to say, practically impossible. So any thoughts on the subject had been little more than flights of fancy. Because Pacifica couldn't possibly—there wasn't a chance—there was no way that Pacifica could be...?

Mabel shook her head as she pulled up in front of the Shack, the cloudy afternoon sky making it look darker than normal. _No_. That's ridiculous. Pacifica had to be the straightest person Mabel knew—and quite possibly the only straight person she knew now that she thought of it. The kiss was nothing more than a good-bye, Mabel told herself as she hauled her bags out of the trunk of her car and let Waddles out a side door. The not-so-little pig squealed as he hit the ground and his hooves scampered up the front steps towards the Shack's door.

_That's all it was. Don't make it out to be something bigger than it was. Don't be stupid._

Mabel was still thinking all these thoughts and more when she shambled in through the front door. She was so distracted that she almost didn't realize the absence of a hyperactive dream demon that usually greeted her by ambushing her with a hug and that she responded to with a kick to the stomach.

She paused at the lack of an attack and looked around to find the house strangely deserted. Dipper wasn't even there to greet her. She glanced around, finding Sophia curled up on the end table in the living room under the reading lamp and fast asleep. Waddles was already snuffling through the kitchen, looking for any sort of left over food to gorge on. Feeling slightly disappointed at the lack of a welcome party (she had stayed with Pacifica for nearly two weeks, after all), Mabel trudged up the stairs, dragging her bags to her room.

As she passed Dipper's room, she saw that it was in an even messier state of disarray than normal, littered with energy drinks and chocolate wrappers and quite a number of beer bottles. The smell and number of dirty clothes told her he hadn't bathed in a while, either. Mabel frowned at the room after finding that Dipper wasn't in the room. The last times she'd seen him like this was after his last high school breakup.

Searching through the rest of the house and calling her brother's name, she found it completely deserted. Where was everyone? It wasn't until Mabel made it back up to her room and had thrown her bags in the corner that she heard the tell tale roar of Dipper's truck and the slam of the front door.

"Mabel!"

Mabel couldn't help the small smile that flitted to her face. _There's my welcome home party._

She stood in front of her door and listened to the thunder of footsteps up the attic stairs and the pounding on her door that she knew would come. She let the pounding continue for a few moments before finally throwing open her door, revealing a very messy and harried-looking Dipper.

For a moment, he stared at her. "You're home!" he said, before throwing his arms around her.

"Oh God, Dipper." Mabel gagged on the scent of four-day-old-grown-man-sweat and the sour smell of what had to be a two hour alcohol binge. "Take a shower, would ya?"

But she smiled as she hugged him back, repressing the urge to vomit.

"Oh thank goodness you're back," Dipper said, pulling away. "I need to talk to you."

Ah, it was good to be back. "Alright, Bro-Bro, what is it?"

Dipper started worrying at his lip, his eyes darting everywhere. "So—I, um, I might of made a huge mistake—or I have a friend that made a mistake and now he doesn't know how to fix it. I need—sorry, he needs your help."

Mabel rolled her eyes and stepped back, opening her door further. "Drop the pretenses, Bro-Bro. Your only friends live miles away and one of them only talks to ghosts. I'm not an idiot."

Dipper shifted uneasily on his feet before rushing past Mabel and into her room.

"Okay," Mabel said with a sigh as she threw herself back onto her bed. "So what massive mistake has my genius brother made this time?"

Dipper shot her a look before he started pacing nervously around her room. Mabel was momentarily distracted by a flash of purple behind him and looked to find an amethyst cardigan thrown over a chair in the corner, one of the many things Pacifica had left behind after sleepovers and movie marathons in the attic room. Mabel stared at it, thinking back to that kiss in front of the hotel. _Is it really all that far-fetched, though?_

She'd been so distracted by this thought, she didn't even realize Dipper had started talking, his hands flapping animatedly as he paced a track in her floor. She shook her head and focused her attention back to her frantic brother.

"—messed up pretty bad—which I know isn't new coming from me—trust me, I know—but this time, I think I managed to mess up bigger than before, like really big—"

"Dipper," Mabel said pulling a purple silk scarf that cost more than anything Mabel owned down from her bedpost and started toying absently with it. "Would you like to tell me what _actually_ happened? You kind of sound like a chipmunk."

Dipper came to a stop in the middle of her room and let out a heavy sigh. He pulled his hat off and ran a distracted hand through his hair.

"Okay," he said finally. "So I like this...person—or at least I think I do."

Mabel's hands suddenly froze in running through Pacifica's scarf. She narrowed her eyes at her brother. "Who are we talking about?"

Dipper flushed pink and suddenly couldn't meet Mabel's gaze. "Um, I'm not—"

"It better not be Pacifica."

Dipper looked up, shocked. "What? Why?"

It was Mabel's turn to turn pink. She quickly tossed aside the scarf. "N-Nothing. It's just, you know with the whole thing with Candy that happened—"

"Mabel, that was ten years ago—"

"I know!" she said, throwing her hands up and turning to sit up on the edge of her bed. "I just, you know, friends shouldn't date. It's a rule."

Dipper gave her a look. "What rule?"

She shrugged. "You know, just a rule."

"Mabel, I don't think—"

"Anyways!" Mabel said, loud enough to cut him off. "Dipper, what were you going to ask me?"

Dipper turned red again and took up to pacing around Mabel's room once more. With his haggard appearance and frantic pacing, he looked rather mad indeed. "Alright. So this...person, right?"

He cast her a furtive glance and Mabel rolled her eyes. She had a pretty good idea of who this "person" was, and though she hated this "person" more than anyone else in this damnable town, she'd seen how the two had gotten along over the last few months, and anyone that made Dipper happy, she figured she'd could at least tolerate.

"I'm pretty sure I like them," Dipper continued, wringing his hands. Dark circles were pooled under his eyes. "And I _thought_ that they might have liked me back, but I—I guess I was wrong, because I kissed them and they didn't really react and they haven't talked to me since and I don't know, I might have rushed things, but at the same time I was so sure that they liked me back and now everything's a disaster and I—"

"Dipper!" Mabel said, seizing hold of her brother's arm as he passed and pulling down onto her bed. " _Calm down_."

Dipper sat down heavily, his eyes still wide and his chest rising and falling fast.

"Now just think a moment," Mabel said in the least irritated voice she could. "Have we ever made a mistake that wasn't fixable?"

Dipper looked at her. "Um—"

" _No_ ," she said firmly. "We fixed Weirdmageddon and the time you became Bill's puppet and the time I accidentally dated a bunch of gnomes that wanted to make me their queen. I'm sure whatever you did this time is fixable too."

This seemed to have calmed Dipper down a bit. At least he didn't look like a spooked deer about to make a run for it.

Mabel gave a sigh and rubbed at her brother's back. "Dipper, you've had a lot going on lately. You've been dealing with a lot. With all the monsters, this conductor thing, whatever that is—"

"Oh my god," Dipper moaned. "I'd forgotten about that!"

"My point is," Mabel ploughed on, "when we're stressed out, we tend to get impulsive. We stop thinking things through. That's not to say you were wrong, you just might have made an impulse decision without thinking logically."

Dipper glanced at her, looking very much like a sad puppy. "Do...Do you think they might hate me?"

Mabel snorted. " _Hate_ you? No! You might have spooked them a bit. But I don't think that won't mean they won't come around." She gave his shoulder a squeeze. "You just need to give them time."

Dipper gave her a grateful smile and wrapped her in one more hug before getting up to leave.

"And take a damn shower, you stinker!" she called, throwing a shoe after him. It hit her door jam and she could hear her brother laugh in the stairway beyond.

Mabel grinned and laid back onto her bed, staring up at the splinter-ridden ceiling. she glanced to the side and found the discarded silk scarf. She pulled it towards her and curled onto her side, burring her nose into the fabric and closing her eyes. It smelled like flowers and expensive perfume.

 

* * *

 

Dipper saddled out of the steamy bathroom, his hair still dripping and his shoulders still wet. A pair of underwear and pants hung low on his hips and a towel was draped over his bare shoulders. With a sigh, Dipper sat down heavily on the edge of his bed and looked around his room.

Geez, he needed to clean. He couldn't remember the last time his room had been in such disarray. He guessed that made sense, though; he'd been distracted for the last few days. After the incident in the kitchen, Bill had all but gone missing. Dipper knew he was still around, from the lacewing flies that were left in Sophia's tank, and the sparse notes that were left around the kitchen sporadically when Dipper had come home, threatening murder or the decapitation of household plants if the right groceries weren't bought. But Dipper had never seen Bill in person since that day.

Dipper didn't have to guess that Bill was avoiding him. Dipper had also had been keeping up with the news just in case some disaster or dead body turned up, but he didn't really think that'd be an issue. Bill had been...different recently. And Dipper had been different himself, he realized. Who would've ever thought, Dipper Pines falling for the destroyer of Gravity Falls and dream demon of nightmares, Bill Cipher?

And then he'd fucked it all up. Possibly for good. Dipper leaned forward and pressed his fingers into his eyes. God, he couldn't believe he'd been so stupid; what had he been _thinking_? Kissing Bill? Professing his...his...whatever this was?? Like a superpowerful dream demon would ever feel anything for someone as pathetic and useless as—

Dipper heard someone clear their throat. Dipper looked up to find someone standing in his doorway. His heart stopped.

"Bill?"

Bill was standing very awkwardly, leaning against the door jam, but not looking remotely comfortable about it. He looked away quickly when Dipper looked at him. Instead, he stared at the ground.

"Pine Tree, there's something I have to tell you."

Dipper swallowed, waiting for Bill to say he hated him. "What?"

"Well," Bill looked up at the ceiling. "About the other day. Actually, it's sort of about the last few months..."

"Bill," Dipper said, studying Bill. "What is it?"

Bill glanced at Dipper. He opened his mouth and closed it again, shaking his head. He then looked around Dipper's room, eyes roving over everything from the discarded beer cans to the scattered dirty clothes. Dipper cleared his throat. His heart was thundering in his chest and Dipper had never felt more shameful in his life, but he knew he had to smooth over whatever had happened between them. The last few days had been hell, not only with Mabel gone, but with Bill not talking to him. Dipper hadn't realized how much he could miss the demon's smile, the sound of his laugh, or the way his eye flashed in the light. He wouldn't be able to stand if Bill kept avoiding him, he knew he wouldn't.

He could swallow his pride to save a...a friendship.

"Look, Bill," he said. "If I upset you the other day or offended you in some sort of demon way, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"

What happened next shocked Dipper so much that he didn't even register what was happening at first. Bill had crossed the room to Dipper's bed in about two strides, bent down, and kissed Dipper, his hand resting lightly on the soft underside of Dipper's jaw.

Thoughts flashed through Dipper's mind at the speed of light. Bill, coming at him with a knife, singing some ghastly, murderous song. Bill, laughing at Dipper as yet another pen exploded in his mouth. Bill, attacking McGucket in the Northwest Manor. Bill, falling asleep next to Dipper late into the night and feeling warm and comfortable in the early morning sun's rays. Bill walking away from Dipper, his back to him without a glance back. Bill, looking down at Dipper as he dangled over the side of a cliff, grinning like the sun lived inside him. And Bill—Bill-Fucking-Cipher—leaning over Dipper, kissing a pathetic useless meat sack like he needed it to breath.

And before Dipper's brain had caught up and before he could respond, it was over.

Bill pulled back, lingering long enough to let his breath ghost over Dipper's lips. For what seemed like a solid moment, neither of them moved.

And then. "I have to go," Bill muttered, letting go of Dipper.

Bill straightened up and turned, leaving Dipper feeling lightheaded and stunned alone on his bed. Dipper blinked, his senses finally coming back to him as he stared at his open door that the only dream demon he'd ever known had just disappeared through.

There was only one thought on Dipper's mind now.

"The fuck you are."

Dipper Pines was out the door and after Bill Cipher in two seconds flat.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It Christmas


End file.
